Durin's Day 2012
'Then what is Durin's Day?" asked Elrond.
'The first day of the dwarves' New Year,' said Thorin, 'is as all should know the first day of the last moon of Autumn on the threshold of Winter. We still call it Durin's Day when the last moon of Autumn and the sun are in the sky together. But this will not help us much, I fear, for it passes our skill in these days to guess when such a time will come again.'It appears that Durin's Day in 2012 is on December 14th, at the threshold of Winter.
Winter starts on December 21st at 1112 UTC and the immediately prior new moon was yesterday, December 13th, at 0342 local time (Cleveland, Ohio).
Today, December 14th, the sun sets at 1658 and the moon sets at 1850, a waxing crescent with 3% of its disk illuminated. It's pretty much the same scenario (sunset and moonset times) as 2011, only a different month.
According to Moonwatch, the crescent moon will be visible tonight quite easily.
I doubt that these observations have escaped the folks putting out The Hobbit (which comes out today), but it's possible.
So go outside today around 1645 and see if you can catch a glimpse of the moon, fairly high up to the left (south) of the sun, almost due south-west. If it's clear (which is currently forecast for Cleveland, an amazing event in and of itself), then you should get a good sight of a fairly new moon dipping down toward the horizon.
