1st Ramadan in Pakistan
For Ramadan moon sighting, the Central Ruet-e-Hilal Committee met in Peshawar on Friday under the chairmanship of Maulana Abdul Khabeer Azad. The committee issued a statement through a press conference after the meeting that the moon had not been sighted anywhere in the country.
Other zonal committees on moon sighting also met across the country, with participants from the Meteorological Department and SUPARCO present.
But no moonsighting was reported from Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad, or Quetta, and the central committee was given news of this change, local media said.
The Met Office had predicted partly cloudy weather in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, including Peshawar, in the next 24 hours a day ago. “As it is cloudy weather, the possibility of seeing the Ramadan moon is slim,” the department added.
The PMD observed that the age of the moon would be approximately 12 hours and its angular distance from the sun about five degrees at sunset, both of which would contribute further to reducing the visibility.
Earlier, the Pakistan Space & Upper Atmosphere Research Commission (SUPARCO) had forecast that Ramadan was expected to commence after Saturday night, as calculated by the moon’s visibility.
