How it works
See where the sun will be, anywhere, on any day
This sun path simulator draws the sun's track across the sky over a map of any place on Earth. Pick a location and a date to see the whole day's arc, where the sun rises and sets, how high it climbs at solar noon, and where it sits at any moment, along with the shadow it casts. Drag the timeline or press play to watch it sweep across the sky.
It's useful when light and shade matter: deciding where a garden bed gets full sun, checking which windows get morning or afternoon light before you rent or buy, seeing how far a fence or tree will shade the yard, lining up a photo at golden hour, or comparing how much lower the winter sun rides than the summer one.
Reading the map
The compass ring is a view of the sky from above: its edge is the horizon and its centre is straight overhead. The dotted inner rings mark 30° and 60° above the horizon.
- Gold arc: the sun's path across the sky that day. The lower it runs toward the ring's edge, the lower the sun is; a summer arc is long and passes close to the centre, a winter arc is short and stays near the edge.
- White dot on the arc: solar noon, labelled with the sun's highest altitude of the day.
- Orange and red lines: the sunrise and sunset bearings, where the arc meets the horizon.
- Large gold dot: the sun at the selected time, sitting on the arc at its real height.
- Dark line from the centre: the shadow cast by an object of the height you set, pointing away from the sun. Zoomed in to street level it is drawn to scale; further out it becomes a short arrow showing the direction only.
How to use it
- Search for a place, type coordinates as latitude, longitude, pan the map to your spot, or press Use My Location. The layers button on the map switches between satellite, street and topographic maps.
- Choose a date. The solstice and equinox shortcuts jump to the longest, shortest and in-between days of the year.
- Drag across the timeline, or press Play for a time-lapse at 1×, 30×, 60× or two simulated minutes per frame. The timeline is coloured by the light: night, twilight, civil twilight, golden hour and day.
- Set an object height under Shadow (a 2 m fence, a 10 m tree) to read off its shadow's length and direction at any time, and zoom in to see it on the ground.
- Download the year's sun times saves a spreadsheet (CSV) of sunrise, solar noon, sunset, day length and sun angles for every day of the year at your location.
- Keyboard: ↑/↓ step a day, ←/→ a month (with Shift, a week), T returns to today, and Space plays or pauses.
Terms
- Azimuth
- The sun's compass direction, in degrees clockwise from true north: 90° is east, 180° south, 270° west.
- Altitude
- The sun's height above the horizon, in degrees. 0° is the horizon and 90° is directly overhead.
- Solar noon
- The moment the sun reaches its highest point of the day. It rarely falls at exactly 12:00 on the clock.
- Twilight and golden hour
- Twilight is the glow while the sun is just below the horizon: civil twilight down to 6° below, nautical to 12°, astronomical to 18°, and night beyond that. Golden hour is the soft, warm light while the sun is less than about 6° above the horizon.
- Solstices and equinoxes
- The solstices are the longest and shortest days of the year. At the equinoxes, day and night are nearly equal and the sun rises almost due east and sets almost due west.
How it's calculated
Sun positions come from the open-source SunCalc library's astronomical formulas, evaluated in your browser for the chosen coordinates and date. They're accurate to a fraction of a degree, which is plenty for planning around light and shade. All times are the location's own local time: its time zone is looked up from the map's coordinates, offline, and daylight-saving rules come from your browser, so Sydney shows Sydney time wherever you're viewing it from. Shadows are calculated for a single vertical object on flat, level ground: they don't account for slopes, terrain, or the buildings and trees around it, which can also block the sun near sunrise and sunset. Maps are Esri World Imagery, OpenStreetMap, and Esri World Topographic; place search and names come from OpenStreetMap's Nominatim service.