I use HourWorld. They have a demo model you can try.
I use HourWorld. They have a demo model you can try.
I use Ephemeris by J Sachs. It runs on a PDA, so I can take it out in the field with me. Cost £0.00.
Steve
I use SunMoonCalc. It also costs nothing and encourages our forum members to share their excellent work.
Graeme
Good work Jeff. If you just want a quick and dirty look that also gives you times for civil twilight, etc. then take a look at:
http://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/docs/RS_OneDay.html
You will get a page like this when you plug in the location by by name:
U.S. Naval Observatory
Astronomical Applications Department
Sun and Moon Data for One Day
The following information is provided for Orford, Grafton County, New Hampshire (longitude W72.1, latitude N43.9):
Friday
5 January 2007 Eastern Standard Time
SUN
Begin civil twilight 6:50 a.m.
Sunrise 7:23 a.m.
Sun transit 11:54 a.m.
Sunset 4:25 p.m.
End civil twilight 4:58 p.m.
MOON
Moonrise 5:28 p.m. on preceding day
Moon transit 1:23 a.m.
Moonset 9:05 a.m.
Moonrise 6:39 p.m.
Moonset 9:30 a.m. on following day
Phase of the Moon on 5 January: waning gibbous with 95% of the Moon's visible disk illuminated.
Full Moon on 3 January 2007 at 8:58 a.m. Eastern Standard Time.
[QUOTE=Jeff Conrad;125196]If you need only information for the Sun, Wide Screen Software's SunPATH ($99)
looks as if it's very nicely done. It's available for the Mac, and using a
Mac emulator, for Wintel machines. John Cook posted
this link that has SunPATH on sale for $87 during September.
SunPath is a very useful program that's easy to use. It gives you all the info you need on one page along with shadow factors if you need that sort of thing. You can figure out how long an objects shadow will be at any given time. The suunto tandem inclinometer and sunpath make for easy foolproof calculations.
vinny
This is an awesome tool - thank you very much Jeff Conrad.
To those of you who haven't discovered this LF.INFO utility, it's worth checking out. Enter your destination, your trip dates, and print - laminate in a Ziplock bag and you're good to go.
http://www.largeformatphotography.info/sunmooncalc/
Jeff Conrad has upgraded the Sun/Moon Calculator to version 3.5. Here is a description of changes:
1. It is now possible to specify a range of rise/set altitudes. This is
much easier than manually adjusting the azimuth range and time
difference to simulate an altitude range when the objective is to find
the days when the Sun or Moon pass through a "window" of azimuth and
altitude.
2. There is an option to search the location database for locations
matching a pattern. In some cases, this is faster than selecting a
location from the list; for example, cycling through all locations in
California. There is an option in user preferences to allow Perl-style
regular expressions in search patterns.
I'm still trying to decide if the search option should be enabled by
default; the user can enable or disable it via the preferences form.
3. There is now some support for browsers that provide tabbed viewing.
For the most part, the user can specify whether new windows open in new
windows or in tabs; behavior is also dependent on browser settings.
4. The user interface has been slightly revised in response to a couple of
user comments. I've added borders around the input areas to make it
more obvious what they do; I've also changed the background to light
gray (the same color as the Sun columns in the output of the current
version) so that the input areas are more obvious. There is an option
to have inactive areas of the main form "grayed out"; this makes more
obvious which of two mutually exclusive options has been selected.
The "graying out" also works better with the gray background. The gray
isn't very dark, but I think I can make the "graying out" work with a
white background if this is a problem
5. I've (finally) updated DST rules for several countries; the ones most
important to the LF users probably are Canada and Australia.
6. Form validation has been revised to avoid problems that result from the
focus() bug in Firefox. In previous releases, entering the wrong value
could result in an endless loop. Because of the change, error handling
with Firefox is slightly different from that with Internet Explorer.
Client sniffing is always a guess; many browsers spoof some of the
navigator properties, so it's possible that some other browser will be
misidentified as Firefox. The validation still works, but it's not
quite as nice as with IE.
I've tested with IE 7, Firefox 2, and Opera 9.21. I've also tested briefly
with the Safari Beta for Windows, but it's still too buggy for a thorough
evaluation.
Great calculator.
However, I think you need to correct azimuth calculations for the southern hemisphere. Sunrise and sunset positions for Melbourne, Australia calculate to 120° and 240° which puts the sun south of Melbourne. I expect this should be 60° and 300° respectively.
Are you talking about today? If so, the rise and set azimuths for Melbourne are as they should be--you folks are in the middle of summer. The situation in the southern hemisphere is the reverse of what it is in sunny (er, rainy) San Francisco; the Sun still appears to move from east to west, but its azimuth decreases during the day, transiting to the north, and further decreasing until it sets. In the summer, rise and set are south of east and west, consistent with a longer day; in the winter, rise and set are north of east and west, with values essentially as you suggest. This is what happens, isn't it?
Other calculators, including the U.S. Naval Observatory Data Services Sun and Moon positions page give essentially the same values as the LF calculator.
Eh - since 0 degrees is due north, and the sun at local noon in the southern hemisphere is due north, the azimuth should decrease from dawn to noon, then jump from 0 to 360, and decrease again.
60 and 300 degrees is consistent with high southern latitude winter, in the summer the arc is more than 180 degrees.
So the calculator is essentially correct.
The only problem I've found is north of the polar circle - if there is no sunrise or sunset, it doesn't display the azimuths. Maybe it could default to 00:00 to 24:00 in those cases?
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