The first day of Shawwal and the start of Eid Al Fitr celebrations will most probably land on Friday, March 20, according to astronomical calculations released by the Sharjah Academy for Astronomy, Space Sciences and Technology.
Ramadan 1447 AH is set to complete its full 30-day cycle, the academy’s observatory said, with Thursday, March 19, closing out the holy month before festivities begin the following morning.
The projection rests on the near-impossibility of spotting the crescent moon from UAE skies on the traditional sighting night. March 18 corresponds to the 29th of Ramadan, the customary evening for lunar observation, but astronomers said the moon will set ahead of the sun on the western horizon — making any confirmed sighting out of the question.
A new moon is calculated to form over Sharjah at 4:24am local time on March 19. By sunset that same day, the crescent would be approximately 14 hours and six minutes old, positioned about six degrees above the western horizon with a 6.5-degree angular separation from the sun and a visibility window of roughly 29 minutes after sunset.
Despite those parameters, the observatory described conditions for UAE-based observers as “critical,” meaning even telescope-assisted viewing would be extraordinarily difficult. Advanced techniques such as image stacking could potentially capture the crescent, but naked-eye detection from anywhere in the country is not feasible.
The outlook is somewhat better further west, where certain Arab and Islamic nations may have geographical and astronomical conditions more suited to early sighting. The academy said most of the Islamic world is expected to share the Friday start date for Eid.
Countries that rely strictly on physical moon sighting with the unaided eye or telescopes, rather than astronomical computation, may delay the beginning of Shawwal to Saturday based on what their local observers are able to confirm.
