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This site does not issue rulings. It reports what the sky does, and describes what each position holds and the evidence it rests on, as fairly as we can manage. Which view to follow is a question for your own scholars and community, not for a website.

What the hilal is

Once a month the moon passes between the earth and the sun. That instant is the conjunction, or astronomical new moon — and at that moment the moon is not visible from anywhere on earth, because the face turned towards us is unlit and it sits in the sun's glare.

In the hours that follow, the moon moves eastward away from the sun at roughly half a degree per hour. A sliver of its sunlit edge turns towards us, and it sets a little later after the sun each evening. Eventually, some evening, the sliver is bright enough and the sky behind it dark enough that a human eye can catch it, low in the west, shortly after sunset. That first catchable sliver is the hilal.

So the conjunction is an astronomical event with one exact time worldwide, while the hilal is an observation — and whether it can be made depends on where you stand and on the sky above you.

Why it is hard to see

A young crescent is not a faint object in a dark sky; it is a moderately bright object in a very bright one. Three things fight you at once:

• It is thin. A day-old crescent is a wire perhaps a fortieth the width of the full moon, and its surface brightness is further reduced near the cusps.
• The sky is bright. Shortly after sunset the western sky is still glowing. The crescent has to out-compete that glow.
• It is low. Near the horizon you look through many times more atmosphere than overhead, which dims the crescent further and often hides it in haze or dust.

These pull in opposite directions as the evening goes on: waiting lets the sky darken, but the crescent sinks into thicker air. The compromise between them is the “best time” our methodology uses.

Why dates differ

People sometimes assume a difference in dates means someone made a mistake. Usually it does not. There are four honest reasons, and they compound.

1. Visibility genuinely differs by place. On the first evening a crescent is catchable at all, it is typically visible from part of the world and not the rest. Look at almost any month on this site: the band sweeps across the globe and leaves whole continents outside it. Two countries can both look honestly and get different answers on the same evening.
2. Weather. A place inside the visible zone still sees nothing through cloud. Absence of a sighting is not evidence of absence.
3. Communities apply different rules about whose sighting counts — the section below.
4. Some rely on a calculated calendar printed in advance, which need not agree with what the sky shows on the night.

The positions

All the views below take the same texts seriously. The Prophet ﷺ said: “Fast when you see it and break your fast when you see it; if it is obscured from you, complete thirty” (al-Bukhārī 1909, Muslim 1081). The disagreement is not about whether that is authoritative. It is about what “you” refers to, and about what counts as knowing.

Local sighting

The month begins for a place when the crescent is seen from that place or its region. The classic evidence is the report of Kurayb (Muslim 1087): Ramadan began a day earlier in Syria than in Medina, and when told of the Syrian sighting Ibn ʿAbbās kept to Medina's own, saying “this is how the Messenger of Allah commanded us.” Jurists who take this view speak of ikhtilāf al-maṭāliʿ — that places of moonrise genuinely differ, which the maps on this site show plainly. The Shāfiʿī school is the most associated with it.

Global sighting

A confirmed sighting anywhere obliges everyone. The reasoning is that the command addresses the Muslim community as a whole rather than each town, and that a lunar month is one month for all of it. Historically the practical objection was that news could not travel fast enough to be acted on; that objection has weakened considerably. Positions along these lines are widely associated with the Ḥanafī, Mālikī and Ḥanbalī traditions, though with real variation among their jurists.

Calculation

Astronomical calculation determines the month, either on its own or as a filter on testimony — for instance, rejecting a claimed sighting from a place where the crescent had already set before the sun. Those who hold this argue that “if it is obscured from you” addresses an inability to know, and that where certainty is now available by other means the underlying purpose is served. Those who object hold that the text prescribes an act of sighting, not merely knowledge of the moon's position.

The Fiqh Council of North America adopted calculation in 2006 and currently applies the criterion used by the European Council for Fatwa and Research: the month begins if, somewhere on earth, elongation is at least 8° and the moon is at least 5° above the horizon at sunset.

You have already seen that criterion. The 8°/5° pair is exactly the reference line drawn in yellow on moonsighting.com's maps. It is a deliberately conservative floor: satisfy it somewhere and a sighting is essentially certain to be possible somewhere.

Umm al-Qura

Saudi Arabia's printed calendar follows an explicit astronomical rule. Since 1423 AH (2002) it is: on the 29th, if the geocentric conjunction occurs before sunset and the moon sets after the sun at Mecca, the next day begins the new month (documented rules and revisions).

Notice that this rule can be satisfied while the crescent is still far too thin and too low to be seen by anyone — the two conditions say the moon is up after sunset, not that it is visible. This is why the calendar sometimes runs a day ahead of observation, and it is the source of a good deal of confusion. Two things are worth keeping distinct: the calendar is published for civil administration, and the Kingdom's religious determinations for Ramadan and the two Eids rest on testimony of sighting, not on the printed calendar.

Printed calendars

Any Hijri date printed months ahead — in a diary, a phone, an app — rests on some calculation rule, because no one can know in advance what will be seen. That is legitimate and necessary for planning. It only becomes a problem when a printed date is mistaken for a report of what the sky did. For Ramadan and the two Eids, most communities follow an announcement made on the night, not the diary.

Reading this site

The maps answer one narrow question: if the sky were perfectly clear, could the crescent be seen from here this evening, according to a given published criterion? They do not tell you when your month begins.

• Green means an ordinary observer with clear air should catch it. Red means no. Between them the answer depends on optical aid, on the observer, and on luck with the air.
• Switch the criterion and watch the bands move. That movement is the honest measure of how much is still unsettled in this science, and it is why we show three rather than one.
• A negative report is data. Careful observers who looked and saw nothing, from a place the map called marginal, are how these criteria get tested and improved.

How to look

If you want to try — and the My location page will tell you whether tonight is worth the trip:

• Find a clear western horizon. A rooftop, a shoreline, high ground. Anything on the skyline will hide it.
• Be there before sunset and note exactly where the sun goes down. The crescent will be near that point, usually a little to one side.
• Start looking at the best time given for your location — roughly 20 to 30 minutes after sunset for a marginal crescent. Earlier is too bright; later it is too low.
• Sweep with binoculars first if you have them, then try with the eye once you know where it is. Many naked-eye sightings are made only after optical aid locates it.
• Never sweep towards the sun before it has fully set. Magnified sunlight causes permanent eye injury.
• Record what you see, including nothing. Time, place, equipment, sky conditions. A careful negative is as useful as a positive.