From Justin Kuo,Dear Pete,
I gave the puzzle you posted on the RRTC bulletin board a try. The name of the photo was eclipse_zpslatrm8ds.JPG
From the photo's EXIF data I found the image was taken on April 4, 2015 at 5:42 AM with a Sony Cybershot camera.
I am guessing this was the Total Lunar Eclipse or "Blood Moon" which was visible in most of North America, South America, Asia and parts of Australia. I assume you took the photo.
I visited http:
//www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/in/usa/cleveland //www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/in/usa/cleveland and ran the animation.
Also from the Earth & Sky website, I found these times.
Eastern Daylight Time (April 4, 2015)
Partial umbral eclipse begins: 6:16 a.m. EDT
It does appear the camera one hour behind (maybe it was not reset for daylight savings time.)
The lunar eclipse was visible by looking toward the east.
Thanks for the puzzle. -- Justin
From Pete:Here’s my take on the picture:
The picture appears to be a picture of either a crescent moon or a crescent sun.
A crescent sun may be seen only during a solar eclipse. However, the shape of the moon’s shadow is wrong – the curvature of it would be caused by something larger than the moon. So, what we have is not a solar eclipse.
An ordinary crescent moon would produce a similar image, but again the curvature of the shadow is wrong.
We are thus left with a lunar eclipse, seen at dawn or dusk. Which one?
Justin’s detective work tells us when the picture was taken, and his further research tells us that the only lunar eclipse occurring on the photo’s date happened on April 4 at dawn, and was seen in the west. The partial eclipse was seen in the eastern US. How close we can get to my house would depend on how much time we’d have to spend splitting hairs, but we are in the ballpark.
I shot the photo on April 4 right around 6 AM, and the Sony Cybershot camera was pointed west. Justin had a typo here.
The clock setting showed a time of 4 AM when the actual time was 5 AM, eastern daylight time.
My hat is tipped to Justin’s scholarship on this important research project.
Justin also sent me a picture of me from Google Earth – using street view you can see me fiddling with my car at 3354 Kirkham Road, Columbus, OH. I did not notice the Google vehicle passing by at the time.
Here we may be a bit hemisphere chauvinistic - the folks in South America also had a view of the eclipse. Perhaps the nature of the foliage can yield a further clue as to hemisphere.
