File talk:Douma bodies 252pm.jpg

A few things about this photo and this scene:

First, prior thoughts, from Monitor blog:

Site 1: Men and boys, dirt floor (mosque?) courtyard, unwrapped then wrapped - canopy cover, west or southwest wall is blue. No gate at the corner.Body count: considering 6 photos at different times, there are at least 24 (probably 25+) in the nearer row, at least 17 in the back row. So at least 41 total. Five are clearly boys (considered here), others might be.

...

Some notes then:

1) The bodies don't seem to display rigor mortis, which means they either died less than 2 hour ago, or about a day ago.

2) The blood on them all seem fairly dry. No one's pouring blood, and only the worst injuries seem to be smearing at all.

3) There are at least 41 bodies, just of men and boys, who already died from their injuries, stopped bleeding, and got fairly dry ... no more than 90 minutes after the alleged attack. In all my research, I'm still not sure if that's possible, but it definitely seems unlikely. There was no rubble really to pull them from, and no sign they were under it either. Just standing around, hit by shrapnel, died and collected quickly, on this scale?

4) The injuries they supposedly died from are generally unclear. At least one has a missing leg, one a nasty chest wound, another a head wound, and some are covered up. But dozens of men and boys are seen, totally intact, just some combination of peppered and ripped-up a bit, bleeding from random spots, smoky by not dusty,

5) Pants torn a lot with both the men and the boys, and with the men but not the boys, belts get undone and pants get pulled halfway down more often than not. This an happen by accident, or be a sign of disrespect for the dead. (that is, it might suggest these were people the rebels disliked, government loyalist or non-Sunni families)

6) Again, this is a segregated scene, but in all other scenes and records, there's still no sign of more than 3 women and about that many girls killed, to what seems about a dozen boys and about a hundred men./ Were they spared the way bombs sometimes do, randomly? Or were they "spared" the way Islamist war booty sometimes is?

Next, refinement of the 90 minutes part. Attack time appears a bit earlier than I thought (" somewhere between 1:25 and 1:45")... maybe closer to 1 PM or even a bit earlier. Activists told HRW it was at "about noon," but I think more like 1 (earlier photo analysis pending).

Exact time for this photo: no later than 2:52 is pretty vague, when there's sunlight showing an exact time. I'm rusty, or feel rusty, but the elevation angle might be 67 degrees? That would be about 1:10 PM! I've asked Petri Krohn elsewhere, opening the question here too, for him or whoever. --Caustic Logic (talk) 13:25, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

And here's a crop with the best sun info: --Caustic Logic (talk) 23:31, 3 September 2015 (UTC)


 * I think the line from the left hand corner of the metal box to corner of its shadow is perpendicular to the view from the camera. Using Gimp I rotated the photo -5.44 degrees to make it horizontal. I then rotated it to -26.67 degrees to get the line drawn by the shadow vertical. This would mean that the sun is at 21.23 degrees from the vertical, i.e. an elevation of 68.77 degrees. -- Petri Krohn (talk) 07:35, 4 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Using the ESRL solar calculator with the arrow set to the central mosque in Douma I get the time 13:12:30 for the elevation 68.77 on August 16th. -- Petri Krohn (talk) 07:54, 4 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Awesome, Petri, thanks! I need to learn some new tricks, one of these days. But we get about the same thing. Somewhat by coincidence - checking back my 67 degrees is reached only at 1:30, not 1:10. You get a bit higher though, which means earlier (with a slow change for moderate differences). You're probably closer. But small differences in elevation are big enough in time it's safer to say in the 1:00-1:30 range, with a reliable reading around 112 (not likely the equivalent span before noon).


 * The significance, again, is this is only x minutes after the explosions at the markets. That still needs set. --Caustic Logic (talk) 09:51, 4 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Notes after re-examining: I still see 5 degrees rotation, but 5.5 is close enough. The main thing I wonder about is how the angle the wall is seen from effects the angle we measure. I made a flat triangle 80px by 250px, about the area covered, drew two lines, 69 and 70 degrees. Did what you did with the cooler, thinking the very corner of the shadow is probably invisible, but best. So I got a bit shallower, 68. I'd say between all this 67 is an outlier and 68-69 is the right range to call. Time range for that is 1:09:33 to 1:20 on the dot. --Caustic Logic (talk) 10:23, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

3D
I decided I could tackle the 3-D aspect, or get a start, and refine the elevation reading. A flat reading, even rotated, isn't quite right. The apparent shadow angle will be offset in 3-D space, with the distance 'back' coming through partly as 'up,' etc. Here, the blue bar is the imaginary pole at the corner of this object, and the yellow triangle is the patch of light it would block, in a plane that here is seen at an angle, green line as its base. Note a flat measure will either use an angle less than 90, or you're not using the right line. dark green = true triangle base, light green = simple horizontal/possibly apparent triangle base. Because of foreshortening, the sliver of difference between them appears very slight. But in real space, which is what matters ... the difference is slight, but significant in context.

How long is this true base? next graphic - Looking at the vertical shadow at the corner of the two walls, the line of light travel between those orange lines (wall corner and shadow edge) is dark green because it'll be the same angle as our base. Foreshortening makes it hard to be sure, but I estimate about 3 units back for every 8 to the left (8:3 - the white bars between the orange). It might be closer to and even 45 degrees, but I don't think fully 8:8.

Apparent triangle vs. real triangle will have a visual:real base proportion, depending, of 29:29 (if there was no offset), 29:32 (if a 3:8 angle), less than 29:37 (if 45 degrees). (visual measure of # of 16" units...) Triangles with these bases shown in that order, each with its overhead shadow offset illustration to explain. Left to right, the elevation angle = time for each: That last is not likely, an upper roof. I think the first one (about Petri's measure) is out, but barely. The middle one is close - range centered just later than it - 68 high, I'd say down to 63 is reasonable = almost exactly 1:20-1:59, with 1:35 - 1:45 is maybe the best range.
 * 68.5 = 1:15:40
 * 66.25 = 1:36:30.
 * 60.5 = 2:16:38

Point stands as I see it. Any other thoughts, Petri, anyone? --Caustic Logic (talk) 11:59, 8 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Can we assume all the pilasters are equally thick and at equal distance from the face of the wall? We could compare the width of the the shadow (on the left) to the width of the part of the pilaster that is exposed (on the right). We can correct for the different distances by dividing by the height of the fence from the top of the rusticated part to the top of the fence. -- Petri Krohn (talk) 08:39, 9 September 2015 (UTC)