THERE was only a 0.1% chance of the new moon – prompting the beginning of the holy month of Ramadan – being visible on the evening of Friday, Feb 28, but as I was already in Port Dickson, I took the opportunity to once again join officials from Majlis Agama Islam Negri Sembilan (Mains), the Department for Surveys and Mapping (Jupem) and others at the Negri Sembilan Observatory – still one of the most powerful in South-East Asia.
As we all know (since fasting began on Sunday, March 2), none of the 29 official viewing locations managed to see it. Still, the sunset was stunning and the conversation stimulating – the alignment of seven planets was the most recent astronomical phenomenon to excite the growing community of stargazers – but that was interrupted by the sighting of a massive crocodile in the coastal waters, dwarfing the commercial ships on the horizon traversing the world’s busiest straits.
