Moon Crescent Tracker

Moon sighting is an important yearly event for Muslims to announce the beginning of the month of Ramadan. Tracking the moon crescent with human eyes is a very challenging task in many countries due to the timing of the first moon sighting. Therefore, having a tracking device to confirm the existence of the moon crescent would be very useful for many countries around the world. In this project we have built a moon crescent tracking system consisting of a 2D rotational stage controlled by a microcontroller unit to orient a high-resolution camera towards the location of the new moon. We have developed a MATLAB software interface, which activates the camera to capture images of the moon at its expected location. The acquired image was then processed to extract the necessary information to declare the sighting or not sighting of the first crescent and the first day of the lunar month.