ICOP member Dr. Tarek Katbeh said: Not seen. "JAS member Eng. Tarek Hadi with
two JAS friends Mr. Hussein and Mr. Bassam Jafar went to the top of Al-Sharah
Mountains near Al-Shoubak city (250 Km to the south of Amman at 1735 meters
above mean sea-level) on Wednesday
(13/10/2004) one night before the day of observation to prepare for the
observation on the next day and to align the two 10" Meade LX200GPS telescopes
and to be sure that everything is working fine.
On the next day, Thursday
(15/10/2004) I went to the observation site with other 10 JAS members and
friends in addition to some local people who lives in that area. We started
our telescopes from the Park mode (Which was aligned from the previous night)
at around 18:00 LT. We made sure that the alignment is accurate by moving the
telescopes to many stars in the sky, and every time we moved the telescope to
an object it was located exactly on the center of the eyepiece, we also made
sure that the focus is perfectly adjusted.
On 18:15 LT, the sun had set and we
started to look for the crescent from one of the telescope, while we were
taking pictures from the other telescope by a 300D Canon digital camera which
was attached to the other telescope. The sky of the western horizon was Partly
cloudy, and the sun disappeared behind the clouds before about one hour of the
sunset, Fortunately, when the Sun was approaching the western horizon, the sky
became clear and there was a strip of clear skies in the western horizon with
about 3 degrees above the horizon, so we were able to see the Sun during
sunset.
Despite the fact that the sky was clear in the area where the crescent
should be, No body was able to see the Crescent through the eyepiece of the
telescope!"