Astronomical Data Used for Litigation (FAQ) | Hacker News Reader

Astronomical Data Used for Litigation (FAQ)

aa.usno.navy.mil

62 pointsvba61620 comments

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.

The PhD astronomer can plausibly be expected to know which sources are reliable, whereas someone asking Google cannot.

But someone asking Google can just check multiple sources. If they all agree with one another, the PhD astronomer is not going to come up with a different answer.

If you just want to know the answer, this is fine. If you want twelve random people to believe you know the answer, credentials help.

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.

> it didn't really require any specialized skills

Many such cases.

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 …”

What else is astronomical data used for in litigation other than determining (upper bound on) illumination levels?

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"

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!

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!!

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.

You might be surprised about how precise we can get: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonrise,_Hernandez,_New_Mex...

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...."

Possibly very precisely if there is something like a satellite streak in the picture, which is very common

In case the site is unavailable for anyone else: https://web.archive.org/web/20240127101027/https://aa.usno.n...

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)

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.

Whimsy is absolutely necessary to intellectual curiosity.

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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