The new moon for the month of Shawwal 1441 AH has only been sighted in several countries in Africa.

For example, Mauritania claimed that declaring the end of Ramadan, and the start of Eid Al Fitr was based on multiple confirmed sighting, also claiming that the number of witnesses exceeds 40 people, in various places in the country.

The same thing happened in Senegal, Mali, Cote d'Ivoire, Niger, and Somalia.

Today, I saw the most bizarre thing.

But first, a backgrounder: here in Southern Ontario, there are two types of day time squirrels: the larger grey squirrel, and the tiny red squirrel. What the latter lacks in size, he makes for it by being very aggressive towards the larger greys, often chasing them off from several backyards at a time. The reds also object to humans being present by chattering in a bird like manner.

So what happened today?

Here is a time lapse sequence of Comet C/2018 N2 (ASSASN).

This comet was discovered by the All-Sky Automated Survey For Supernovae (ASSASN) using software to analyze the images from one night to the next, and detect anything that is not a star.

The sequence was made on October 8th, 2019, between 1:35 am and 2:11 am while the comet was near the Triangulum constellation, and the M33 galaxy.

For this year's Eid Al-Fitr 1440 A.H. (2019 C.E.), the Muslim world had some countries, as well as some masjids in the West, ending the Ramadan fast on Tuesday. In Kitchener/Waterloo, we had the Kitchener mosque, following astronomical calculations, end the fast on Monday, while the Waterloo Masjid, following sighting, ended it on Tuesday.

Seeing the Unseeable

The problem here is that it was astronomically impossible to sight the new moon on Monday, since it is not illuminated at all.

This is a short video demonstrating how to use a Hall Effect sensor and a magnet to implement Periodic Error Correction (PEC).

Here is an example on eBay for a standalone 3144 Hall Effect Sensor. And here are the small neodymium magnets.