Thin line connecting the 2 ends of moon's crescent?

Question

From my hometown in South India, whenever I look up at the moon's crescent, only the bright portion is visible. The dark portion is absolutely pitch-black and invisible, which makes the crescent appear like a white cardboard cut-out in the sky. But here in the UK, I can see a VERY thin line connecting the 2 tips of the crescent. And there appears to be a thin, sparse white filling inside the dark portion of the crescent. That is, the connecting line and the filling give the viewers a clear picture of the moon's circumference, here in the UK. But when viewed from South India, this connecting line and filling are not there. Any explanations why?

Answer 1

The faint light you are seeing on the dark half of the moon is not light "leaking through" as the first person suggested; the moon is totally opaque. That light is reflected off the cloud cover of Earth, and is illuminating the moon faintly through radiosity.

The thin line at the terminator is a secondary consequence of this faint illumination. The line is an illusion, which we see because our visual systems attempt to sharpen the images we see. A sudden transition between brightly illuminated and faintly illuminated parts of the moon will be sharpened by the darker side becoming apparently darker close to the light, and the light side becoming apparently brighter close to the dark side. This is similar to an "unsharp mask" operation which is used to sharpen photographs in pre-press usage.

If the radiosity illumination of the dark side is negligible, the sharpening effect will be black on black, and you will not see it.

One reason why you may see the radiosity effect in the UK and not in India is because you may be closer to more shore areas, which are where cloud cover tends to accumulate, causing the albedo of Earth to be higher in Europe than in India.

Answer 2

The word Ramd in Arabic means to burn hence Ramadan is a month that sins burn away, inshallah. The moon is something we use to keep time and nothing else. To those say we worship the moon this is another lie because why we use a crescent instead of a moon, as a symbol. shouldn't we use the moon as a symbol if we worshiped it? The main point is that the crescent wasn't used a symbol in Islam until the Ottoman Turk period during the 16th century. Then does the Christains worship the sun because they follow a solar calender then?

Answer 3

When the moon is very new and there is a very thin crescent - as there was two nights ago - some of the light that is illuminating the far side of the moon spills over the edge and you can see the full disk of the moon with a bright, thin crescent on one side and a thin line marking the rest of the disk.

Answer 4

i dont know if this maybe some help but it depends on your location in the earth. just like with viewing certain galaxies and starts you can see some if your above the equator and different stars from the south side of the equator. im sure the view of the moon might be the same. in some parts of the earth you may bee certain parts of the moon