Difference between Fajr at 20 and 18 degrees

[AljabrAH]

Dear developers

Asalam Alykum

I have used your code in Python to get prayer timing with different options. It is great. So, thank you for sharing such a valuable code. However, I noticed an issue. When calculating Fajr at 20 and 18 degrees, the times do not make sense for some days. For example, from 13/5 to 4/8 (for any year), times for Fajr at 20 degrees shift towards times of Fajr at 18 deg! Between 3/6 and 9/7, the two times are identical! The issue is not only with Fajr 20 but also with Fajr 18, where it also shifts towards times of lower degrees. I spent considerable time understanding the issue and found that it is related to the latitude of the city. The above example is for Hofuf (lat = 25.391856, long = 49.595185). The problem expands for higher latitudes. I have attached an example and you may check these times (Fajr 20 and Fajr 18) with verified websites or apps for prayer timings. I did not check Isha's timings for different degrees but expected the same issue.

Thank you so much for your time and efforts and Jazak Allah Khair.

Ahmed Aljabr

[uchagani]

Wa alaykumu s-salam. Can you please try the settings giving you trouble against the API: https://aladhan.com/prayer-times-api

This library just wraps that API

[AljabrAH]

Thank you for getting back to me. Upon checking the prayer times calendar on aladhan.com (https://aladhan.com/calendar) with the same settings, I got accurate results for Fajr at 20 and 18 degrees. For the same day, Fajr at 20 and 18 degrees are 3:10 and 3:21. These are fairly close to official timings. However, I found another issue with these calendars. The issue is that the midnight timings are always calculated based on the standard (mid sunset to sunrise) method regardless of your chosen method. However, this issue does not exist in the Python library.

Regarding outputs from (https://aladhan.com/prayer-times-api), it is shown in JSON format. Is there a way to display these outputs in a nicer-looking format and also is there a way to generate annual tables from such a data format? I highly appreciate it if you could help me with that.

Thank you so much,

[uchagani]

I don't own the API so you will need to get in contact with the people that own it https://aladhan.com/contact