I'm sitting here with this image of "Allah" with a great big clock just ready to pounce on the Muslims that pray at the wrong time. Hell with him, he didn't pray at exact sundown! No virgins for him!
It's not that easy
How to calculate prayer times:
To calculate prayer times two astronomical measures are necessary, the declination of the sun and the difference between clock time and
sundial clock. This difference being the result of the eccentricity of the earth's orbit and the inclination of its axis, it is called the Equation of time. The declination of the sun is the angle between sun's rays and the equator plan.
[1]
In addition to the above measures, to calculate prayer times for a specific location we need its spherical coordinates.
[2]
In the following
is the time zone, and
the time equation value.
and
are the
Longitude and the
Latitude of the considered point, respectively.
denotes the
Declination of the Sun for a given date.
An other important equation gives the time difference between when the sun hits its highest point in the sky (Dhuhr time) and any other angle
, as follow:
- Midday (Dhuhr) time is easily obtained. When the sun reaches the mid sky, time is given by:
- Sunrise (Chorok) and Sunset (Maghreb) time are given by , in fact it is the astronomical sunset/sunrise that occurs for . 0.833 is a slight correction that gives the actual time. So and .
If we consider the elevation of the point we should add another correction to the constant
.
- For Fajr and Isha many conventions about the angle exist. It is of 17 and 18 degrees respectively for Fadjr and Isha prayers according to the Muslim World League.
- For Asr time according to the majority of Muslim schools, including Shafi'i, Maliki, Ja'fari, and Hanbali, it is when the length of an object shadows became equal to its length plus the length of its shadow at noon. The Hanafi schools states that the time of Asr is when an object's shadow reaches two times the length of the object itself, plus the length of its shadow at noon. The time the shadow of an object reaches times its length is given by the equation: .
- It is called for the Maghrib prayer when the sun is completely folded behind the horizon, plus 3 minutes by precaution.
Salah times - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia