Sun position

How to use it

Search for a place, tap the map or use your location, then pick the date. The slider moves the time; “Play the day” runs the sun through the whole day in a few seconds. Times are on the place’s local clock.

On the map, the dashed circle is the horizon and the yellow line is the sun’s path that day: the closer to the point, the higher it is. The straight lines show where it rises, where it sets and where it is at the chosen time; the dark dashed one shows which way the shadow falls.

Azimuth and elevation: the two numbers behind the sun’s position

Azimuth

The direction of the sun, in degrees clockwise from north: 90° is east, 180° south and 270° west.

Elevation (or altitude)

How many degrees the sun is above the horizon: 0° is the horizon and 90° is straight overhead. A negative number means it’s below the horizon.

We give the apparent elevation: the one you actually see, including the slight lift caused by the atmosphere, which is over half a degree near the horizon. It’s the elevation of the sun’s center: at sunrise, when the top edge peeks over the horizon, the center is still at about −0.2°.

How the sun’s path changes over the year

In New York (latitude 40.7° N), at the June solstice the sun rises in the ENE (58°), sets in the WNW (302°) and climbs to 72.7° at noon. At the December solstice it rises in the ESE (121°), sets in the WSW (239°) and gets no higher than 25.9°. At the equinoxes it rises almost due east (89°) and stands at 49.3° at noon.

Solar noon, when the sun is highest, isn’t at 12:00: in New York it’s at 12:58 PM at the June solstice and 11:54 AM at the December solstice, because of the time zone, daylight saving time and the equation of time.

In the Southern Hemisphere it’s all reversed: the midday sun is to the north. In Sydney, at the June solstice (its winter), the noon sun is due north (0°) and only 32.7° high.

How long a shadow is

The shadow of an upright object on flat ground is its height divided by the tangent of the sun’s elevation, and it points directly away from the sun. With the sun at 45°, the shadow is as long as the object is tall; lower than that, it gets longer.

In New York, at noon, a 1 ft stick casts a 0.31 ft shadow at the June solstice and a 2.06 ft shadow at the December solstice. Enter the height of your object (a tree, a building, a pergola) to see its shadow at any time.

For solar panels, a patio or a photo

For solar panels, the diagram shows where the sun passes in each season and how high it gets. In the Northern Hemisphere, panels usually face south. What it can’t tell you is how much energy you’ll produce: that takes sunlight and cloud data, such as NREL’s free PVWatts calculator.

For a patio or a garden, compare the sun’s azimuth with the direction your wall faces and check the elevation: a 60 ft building 90 ft away blocks the sun whenever it’s lower than 33.7° (the obstacle’s height divided by its distance, turned into an angle). The tool doesn’t know about the buildings or hills around you, so you’ll need to check those yourself.

For a photo, find the day the sun rises or sets right behind a landmark: move the date until the sunrise or sunset line runs through it.

How it’s calculated and how accurate it is

The position comes from Astronomy Engine, an open-source library based on the VSOP87 models, with average atmospheric refraction. We checked it against the U.S. Naval Observatory’s celestial navigation data at seven moments from 1900 to 2026, from Tromsø to Ushuaia: the largest difference is 0.16 arcminutes, about 200 times smaller than the sun’s diameter in the sky.

Real refraction varies with temperature and pressure, and near the horizon it can shift the apparent elevation by a few tenths of a degree. Higher up, the effect is negligible.