First Visibility of the Lunar Crescent

Astronomical observatories are often asked to predict the visibility of the young crescent moon. The SAAO has provided this information for many years, but the early 1990s were a watershed of sorts. Astronomical visibility factors created an unusually severe bias against the southern hemisphere to an extent not seen since the 1860s! The perplexity caused by the resulting delay in sightings ultimately led to a more systematic analysis of this problem, the current results of which are summarized here.