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"
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.
Many such cases.
(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)
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 …”
