Sky and Telescope, Sept 2000, p70-71
All Eyes on the Moon by Joe Heafner
".. MoonCalc takes astronomy back to its cultural and religious beginnings in a delightfully modern way.... In summary, MoonCalc provides graphical predictions of lunar crescent visibility as well as a plethora of other traditional lunar information (phases, rise and set times, lunar position by celestial co-ordinates and plotted on a star map, and so forth) without the overhead of most modern software. MoonCalc is a shining example of simplicity: it takes up only 600 kilobytes of disk space and doesn't even need Windows to run on your PC. And perhaps best of all, the program costs nothing.... If you are interested in the Moon for any reason, you need to try MoonCalc"
Ciel & Espace, April 2000, p75-79
Offrez-vous des croissants
"Le logiciel MoonCalc (en anglais) de M. Monzur Ahmed est disponible gratuitement sur le site <www.starlight.demon.co.uk/mooncalc>. Il détermine graphiquement les zones de visibilité Des croissants lunaires en tenant compte d'une multitude de paramétres"
Saudi Gazette, 22nd Dec 1999
On Moon Trail by Tarek Sida
"The indeterminacy of the first date of Islamic months has often created a nightmare for Muslim community leaders who are called upon to make a correct judgement on the basis of claims of moon-sighting or news from other locations. However, due to rapid technological and scientific progress in the field of space exploration, astronomers are more capable today of accurately calculating the movement of the Earth, Sun and Moon. The release on Internet of a new version of Moon Calculator program can serve the Muslim world by providing new tools for precisely determining the start of Islamic months within the frame work of Shari'ah....Consequently, Dr. Monzur Ahmed's MoonCalc 5.2 program is an important tool for providing a scientific method of calculation, as it can utilize any of a number of given crescent visibility prediction models and/or criteria that could aid in sighting the crescent at the beginning of each Islamic month at any location on earth...."
Software and Data for Practical Astronomers . The Best of the Internet. by David Ratledge; series editor: Patrick Moore; Springer, London (1998): p44-47
"MoonCalc...this... DOS program by Dr. Monzur Ahmed is a little cracker! If you are a lunar observer wanting to know when to observe (or an astrophotographer wanting to know when not to) then this little program will tell you everything about the visibility of the Moon..... for any place on Earth the lunar position, age, phase, rising and setting times are calculated and displayed in either tables or charts. The graphics are impressive too. The Moon can be shown against the stars, just like a planetarium program, either in RA/DEC or ALT/AZI format. A close-up graphic option even includes features such as craters and gridlines. The earliest possible sighting of the Moon is a main feature of the program, which is important to some communities. Again a mixture of graphics and text provide the information.... All in all an excellent program you will keep returning to.
Sky and Telescope DEC 1997, p73
"...Nearly everything you could ever want to know about the Moon's visibility is incorporated into MoonCalc. This freeware MSDOS program indicates lunar position, age, phase and orientation for any place on earth. It calculates rise and set times and "young Moon"circumstances..."
Wall St Journal, Jan 7 1997, frontpage
Moon over Mecca: It's tough to Pinpoint Start of Holy Month
by D.Pearl...in a laboratory Monzur Ahmed demonstrates his Moon Calculator software, released in December [1997] and available free via the Internet... he selects "London" and "January 8" and gets a full screen simulation of the night sky.... MoonCalc also produces a full-color map with a parabola-shaped zone of moon visibility...
Rocket Mail, Nov 5 1997, p4
Software Review, MoonCalc 4.0 by F. Graham
".. I am a sucker for Moon software. But most of what I see is not very good. MUCH to my surprise, an excellent lunar program is available called MoonCalc 4.0....MoonCalc 4.0 is the work of Monzur Ahmed in England. An excellent program, Dr. Ahmed's graphics show the Moon accurately from any year back to 600 and forward to 2100. It also shows the position of the Moon in the sky and gives other data....
