Take Islam for example, where the holy month of Ramadan is based on the lunar calendar. There’s always so much fluctuation and confusion about the dates that it starts and ends at, sometimes by as much as 3 days.
Why? In this day and age, can we not calculate or simulate exactly when the moon will be facing a specific region? Shouldn’t we be able to do this years in advance?
In: Planetary Science
Of course we can calculate the positions of celestial bodies with extreme precision, including the moon. However Ramadan is technically not based on the position of the moon as it can be calculated.
Instead the date of Ramadan is based on the “**sighting**” of the new moon as a narrow crescent. This depends on all the various factors which can impact how visible the moon is in a given area or “matla” in which a given moon-sighting applies. After all the new moon isn’t going to be visible for people in America as in the Middle East, and a sighting doesn’t count if only a few people see it but independently by a large number of people.
So you can see how there can be a difference of opinion on when the new moon is “sighted” and the cascading dates of Ramadan from that, even within the same community. This has nothing to do with our abilities to calculate the position of the moon, but instead to do with the various technicalities and eccentricities of religion.
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