The following diagrams show the visibility of the new crescent Moon over the first three days of the lunation. The unshaded areas indicate regions from which the Moon cannot be seen. The Moon becomes more easily visible from the regions of increasing colour intensity i.e. the Moon will be seen easily from the regions shown in red. The near vertical blue lines show the age of the Moon at the so-called "best time" of observation.
The following diagram shows the visibility of the new crescent Moon on 2009 July 22.
The second diagram is for 2009 July 23 and exhibits more shaded regions than those found in the map for 2009 July 22. Consequently, a larger fraction of the surface of the Earth will be able to observe the crescent Moon with ease.
The third diagram is for 2009 July 24 and is almost totally shaded in red. The majority of the Earth will be able to observe the crescent Moon with ease.
Global Visibility Maps for previous months
Several requests have been received suggesting that we make available the global visibility
maps for previous new crescent moons. The following table contains links to the visibility
maps (in pdf format) for the first three days of each lunation since the Moon Watch project
started in October 2005.