Wednesday Mar 11, 2009 at 00:27

YASSC - yet another sunrise/sunset calculator

I’ve put a beta version of a program I’ve been working on up on the site. It’s called The Photographer’s Ephemeris and is intended to help landscape and nature photographers plan their shoots (as in, where and when will I find my next glorious sunrise?).

Now, as I alluded to in the title of this post, there are many such tools already available. What on earth could another one have to offer?

Well, as Eric Raymond famously wrote, “Every good work of software starts by scratching a developer’s personal itch”, and this is no exception (and I hope it’s good).

Things I was looking for in such a program and had never previously found:

• Should run on my Mac (as well as Windows) – many landscape photogs use Macs
• Should include a topographical map in the program – I don’t just want to look at numbers, I want to see the angle of sunrise as it will fall on the landscape
• Should work in the way I plan my shoots – don’t show me just one day’s data, and don’t show me 30 all at once
• Should have an attractive GUI

The Photographer’s Ephemeris attempts to address all these points (although you can judge the last one for yourselves).

Current features

• Time of sunrise, sunset
• Azimuth of sunrise, sunset
• Time, azimuth of moonrise, moonset and phase of moon
• Civil, nautical and astronomical times
• Select arbitrary location from map
• Visualize sunriset/sunset/moonrise/moonset as overlay to Google Maps
• Save locations to local list
• Automatic timezone detection for selected map location
• Automatic altitude lookup for selected map location
• Placename search – move map to placename search result
• Placename lookup – find closest placename to selected map location
• Windows, Mac and Linux compatible, courtesy of Adobe AIR

Where can I get it?

Click here – lots more information and detailed instructions.

What’s the plan?

The software is in Beta at the moment and is free to download and use (and will remain so for the foreseeable future). I have a whole list of things I want to add to it, including, but not limited to:

• Show altitude/azimuth of sun/moon for an arbitrary time of day (not just rise/set)
• Find phase of moon at a specified location (e.g. when is full moon at Delicate Arch in October?)
• Automated Daylight Savings Time detection for an arbitrary location
• Adjust bearings for local magnetic declination (compass north, not true north)
• “Expedition planning” – ability to add Locations and dates to an expedition schedule
• Printing – you’re going to want to print all this off and take it with you
• Offline mode – get the times and angles for your saved locations when offline, even if you can’t get the map

Let me know what you think.

Posted in Technology TPE

Stephen · Wednesday, March 11, 2009, 00:27 · Permalink

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