Forensic astronomy

As a forensic science in the strict sense of the term, astronomical knowledge can help resolve certain legal questions. In one reported instance, an astronomer testified in court as an expert witness as to whether a newly built house would cast a shadow on another house. More generally, questions about the Sun's or Moon's placement in the sky at certain times of day or night may be legally relevant, such as for determining the date on which a photograph was taken. Abraham Lincoln once successfully defended a legal case by describing the location of the Moon on the night of the offense. ==History==

, The Meteor of 1860 By extension, the adjective "forensic" has come to be used for any detailed analysis of past events, whether related to legal questions or not, and so the determination of past celestial constellations more generally is now increasingly referred to as "forensic astronomy". For research in art history, in particular, methods of astronomy are sometimes useful for determining the place and time of creation of a particular work of art, or of the event that inspired it. Such methods have for instance been used to date Vincent van Gogh's painting Evening Landscape with Rising Moon (to 9:08 pm, 13 July 1889), and to identify the meteors described in Walt Whitman's poem Year of Meteors (1859-60) – in conjunction with Frederic Edwin Church's painting of the same event (at right) – as the meteor procession of 1860. == Forensic astronomy in literature ==

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and the “False Dawn” The False Dawn, which is also known as the “zodiacal light”, demonstrates a faint glow that can be seen in the sky to the east in certain conditions and right before the morning light fall. It gets its name because many believe it to be the fall of dawn, but it is not. The zodiacal light is the sunlight shining into the dust that is between planets that orbit around the Sun. The name comes from the light coming mostly from the constellations that lie in the zodiac along the Sun's orbit. The zodiacal light was believed to earliest be discussed in 1905 by William T. Lynn where he says that Omar Khayyam's poem The Rubaiyat references the “False Dawn”, but his references are not correct about the “False Dawn”. Later researchers found that Omar Khayyam was mistaken and not seeing the “False Dawn”, but was seeing a “faint morning twilight glow” that was commonly mistaken for the “False Dawn” it was only the “morning sky”. == Forensic astronomy in history ==

The sinking of the Titanic On April 10, 1912, a ship sailed from Southampton, England called the RMS Titanic. The Titanic stopped in France and Ireland, and then to sailed for New York City but never made it. On April 14, at 11:40 pm, the ship struck an iceberg, and by April 15 the Titanic had sunk completely by 2:20 am. == Forensic astronomy in art ==

Monet’s The Cliff, Etretat, Sunset Claude Monet created almost 2,000 paintings during his career, including his painting of the sunset on a winter afternoon in 1883. The painting is of a cliff that faces the English Channel called Falaise d’Amont where the north-east half of the cliff is called the Porte d’ Amont, which means “upstream portal”, and the southwest half is called “Porte d’Aval”, which means “downstream portal”. The pyramid-shaped rock is called the Aiguille, which means “needle”. When people look farther southwest, there is another bay and beach which can only be accessed when the tide is low called the Manneporte, which means “great portal”. When looking back toward the northeast a completely new view of the Porte d’Amont and Needle can be seen. When people walked along the curve of the beach Etretat, the sun overlaps the Needle In a farther distance. In the southwest part of Etretat Beach, the Needle completely disappears because it is behind the cliff. Once people have walked northeast, The Needle loses the end of the Aval arch. At certain points to the person's eye, the Needle forms a perfect pyramid in the sun's horizon. By taking into consideration all of Monet's paintings of the Etretat beach and the shadows of the Porte d’ Aval and Needle, Monet's easel's exact placement can be determined due to this forensic astronomy. ==See also==