One of Andereck’s students, Natalie Cunningham, was looking for a senior project in 2008 and agreed to help Krehbiel.
“I had to do a lot of math to go back into the past and see where the sun and moon were,” said Cunningham, who was studying English and astrophysics.
In the summer of 2008, Krehbiel took Cunningham to Utah to take readings.
All you need is the Starry Night software package, for example. You can go anywhere, anytime, on the earth and beyond, and see the sky from that vantage point. I used it to ascertain what star it was that Shackleton saw from the rail of his ship the evening he died, and what star Thoreau saw through the fabric of his tent camping "near Penichook Brook, on the confines of Nashville" the night of Sept. 2, 1839. I also checked up on some of Ptolemy's observations recorded in the Almagest ... yes, the software accounts for precession!
As a matter of fact, something like this article was posted a year or so ago, and I used it to look into that, as well.