Are you are a star at geography? Can you answer Chinese exam question looking at earth from space that left students flummoxed?

An unusual exam geography question – featuring a man on the moon looking at the earth – left a number of Chinese students scratching their heads, mainland media reports. But can you work out the answer?

This image used in the test paper – part of a series of exams taken by 350,000 high-school students on Saturday and Sunday across Jiangsu province – is the same one that appears on screen for about a second when mainlanders log on to the WeChat social media blogging app, the news website Thepaper.cn reported on Monday.

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The question asked students to observe the earth and the shape of the clouds to work out whether the picture was taken in June or December, and if the wind at the time had been blowing from the west or the southeast side of the planet.

The composite image features an illustration of a man standing on the moon looking out towards the earth, which is actually a real photograph, known as The Blue Marble, which was taken by the crew of the American Apollo 17 spacecraft from a distance of about 45,000km above the earth in 1972.

Last weekend’s exams are also called the “mini-gaokao” because they are held ahead before the National Higher Education Entrance Examination, commonly known as Gaokao.

“I’ve never seen a question like this,” the report by Thepaper.cn quoted one student saying. “I feel like I have wasted all my time using WeChat.”

A teacher told the news website that the creative question had sparked a lot of discussion and left many candidates surprised.