[HN Gopher] Astronomical Data Used for Litigation (FAQ)
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Astronomical Data Used for Litigation (FAQ)
Author : vba616
Score : 57 points
Date : 2024-01-26 12:29 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (aa.usno.navy.mil)
(TXT) w3m dump (aa.usno.navy.mil)
| ragtagtag wrote:
| In case the site is unavailable for anyone else:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20240127101027/https://aa.usno.n...
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| Slight tangent - I often find project managers and senior
| management wanting a "zipper" project - where some big brained
| architect predicts the future use cases and needs and can plan
| pulling together the teeth in 15 steps ahead
|
| Which is of course rubbish - mostly it's amazing if you can
| predict the next zip.
|
| And this reminds me of that - what did the first naval rating
| think when he sat and read a letter from an attorney saying "my
| client says it was too dark for the cops to recognise him can you
| please ..."
| a2800276 wrote:
| These whimsical post are the best thing about hacker news! Thanks
| for posting...
|
| (I hate to call the linked page "whimsical", because in most
| ways, the provided information is the opposite of whimsical:
| clear language, deep subject matter knowledge, authoritative and
| extremely well presented. I use whimsical in the sense that it is
| likely of no immediate use to the overwhelming majority of
| visitors here)
| account-5 wrote:
| This sort of article is also one of the main reasons I visit
| HN. Whilst I enjoy the technical stuff these occasional nuggets
| are extremely interesting.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Whimsy is absolutely necessary to intellectual curiosity.
| clbrmbr wrote:
| What else is astronomical data used for in litigation other than
| determining (upper bound on) illumination levels?
| progbits wrote:
| Presumably star positions in nighttime photographs could be
| used to determine location/time. Not very precisely but it
| could be enough to say the picture definitely wasn't taken at
| time/place that is claimed.
|
| Edit: or even simpler, moon phases:
|
| "Here is a photo of my client on the night of the murder so
| they have alibi"
|
| "There was a new moon on the night in question but the photo
| shows a full moon"
| 7373737373 wrote:
| Possibly very precisely if there is something like a
| satellite streak in the picture, which is very common
| br3d wrote:
| Perhaps even more crudely, something like "You claimed you
| crashed your car because the sun was in your eyes, but it was
| morning and you were heading west...."
| Amorymeltzer wrote:
| A terrible thing to do to yourself is learn what moon phases
| are approximately visible at what times of day. It's not too
| complicated--a full moon by definition is opposite the Sun's
| position, hence night, etc.--but it's surprising how many
| books out there will have incorrect moon phases. It's clearly
| not on the list of things to fact check!
| ptsneves wrote:
| Neil Degrasse Tyson famously called out titanic for having
| an incorrect night sky depiction. In a later remaster they
| fixed it. It is well covered in his book as well as online.
| krallja wrote:
| Even more galling are all the paintings and drawings of the
| moon which have stars visible THROUGH THE MOON. The moon is
| spherical, whether it's lit or not! It doesn't turn into a
| croissant and then disappear!!
| andreareina wrote:
| You might be surprised about how precise we can get: https://
| en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonrise,_Hernandez,_New_Mex...
| antognini wrote:
| A friend of mine used to work at Carnegie Observatory in
| Pasadena. Apparently every now and again a lawyer would come by
| looking for an astronomer to be an expert witness in a trial.
| Usually it was to testify about the position of the sun at the
| time of a car accident. (One party might claim that they were
| blinded by the sun but the other would argue that the sun
| couldn't have been seen in that location.)
|
| The funny part was that it didn't really require any specialized
| skills. They'd just look up the position of the sun at the time
| of the accident in an astronomical almanac like anybody else
| would. But in the context of a trial it lends some weight if it
| comes out of the mouth of someone with a PhD in astronomy.
| dogtorwoof wrote:
| > it didn't really require any specialized skills
|
| Many such cases.
| webdoodle wrote:
| I got to be an expert witness as a former university researcher
| working on databases. It was hoot, but ironically, like you
| mentioned the questions they asked on both sides anyone could
| have answered. It felt more like a popularity contest than one
| of facts.
| devilbunny wrote:
| The PhD astronomer can plausibly be expected to know which
| sources are reliable, whereas someone asking Google cannot.
| whatgoodisaroad wrote:
| Lunar illumination was once used by Abraham Lincoln to defend a
| murder suspect
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duff_Armstrong#Murder_trial
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