SunCalc - Solar Calculator
I want to share with you a small but useful projector that I developed at my leisure - the solar calculator SunCalc .
SunCalc shows on the map for the selected location and date the trajectory of the sun and the phase of illumination during the day (and a couple of nice little things).
His idea came after I needed to find a good place in Crimea for shooting a frame of the sun going off into the sea at sunset (for the video, they shot here in the end) - it turned out that all the existing tools for this were very outdated. I wanted to create my own, making it the best one can imagine, found a good page with a bunch of astronomical formulas , took up the development in free evenings and this is the result.
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First, in purely domestic situations. Until what time do I need to leave the forest, at least for now I can see something, if I still haven’t bought a large spotlight? How long can I sunbathe in the evening before the beach covers the shadow of the rock to the right? At what time will not the sun shine straight in my eyes when I go out to play football on the playground under the house? What is the apartment that I am going to rent, the illumination during the year? Already most often useful in this kind of issues.
Secondly, lovers of photography! Including me. It is often important to know, for example, when and how long twilight lasts (for night landscapes), which way the sun sets or where the sun rises (to choose a good angle), what time to choose an object for a photo shoot so that you don’t have to take pictures against the sun or he did not fall completely into the shadow of a neighboring building, etc.
Thirdly, for general education and satisfaction of natural curiosity. Why is Australia hotter in winter than in summer? What really are white nights and in which cities and when are they observed? What about polar day and night? How does the sun's trajectory change from north to south? How many minutes is the dawn from Moscow to Kiev? Etc.
I hope you will find useful use of this little service. I would be very happy impressions and comments in the comments. You can also leave ideas or vote for those already expressed here . Thank!
update: sorry for the problems with hosting, the project temporarily moved to another server - now everything seems fine.
SunCalc shows on the map for the selected location and date the trajectory of the sun and the phase of illumination during the day (and a couple of nice little things).
His idea came after I needed to find a good place in Crimea for shooting a frame of the sun going off into the sea at sunset (for the video, they shot here in the end) - it turned out that all the existing tools for this were very outdated. I wanted to create my own, making it the best one can imagine, found a good page with a bunch of astronomical formulas , took up the development in free evenings and this is the result.
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Opportunities
- draws on the map a beautiful vector graph with the position of the sun at dawn, sunset and at the selected time (yellow, orange and red line), projection of the sun's trajectory (orange arc) and its spread throughout the year (yellow area around it); the closer the point on the graph is to the center of the circle, the higher at this moment the sun is above the horizon
- hovering over the sunset / dawn line shows the corresponding spread of positions
- It shows the illumination (darkness, twilight, daylight) in color on the time slider
- You can see the time not only of dawn and dusk, but also of 3 types of twilight (civil, navigation, astronomical) and total darkness
- shows a link to the weekly weather forecast (cloudiness, precipitation, fog) in the selected location
- able to determine the location (click on the appropriate field -> Detect my location)
- You can also choose a location by searching, auto-detecting, clicking on the map, or dragging a marker.
- permalinks for a specific place / time and back / forward in the browser work
What ego can be used for
First, in purely domestic situations. Until what time do I need to leave the forest, at least for now I can see something, if I still haven’t bought a large spotlight? How long can I sunbathe in the evening before the beach covers the shadow of the rock to the right? At what time will not the sun shine straight in my eyes when I go out to play football on the playground under the house? What is the apartment that I am going to rent, the illumination during the year? Already most often useful in this kind of issues.
Secondly, lovers of photography! Including me. It is often important to know, for example, when and how long twilight lasts (for night landscapes), which way the sun sets or where the sun rises (to choose a good angle), what time to choose an object for a photo shoot so that you don’t have to take pictures against the sun or he did not fall completely into the shadow of a neighboring building, etc.
Thirdly, for general education and satisfaction of natural curiosity. Why is Australia hotter in winter than in summer? What really are white nights and in which cities and when are they observed? What about polar day and night? How does the sun's trajectory change from north to south? How many minutes is the dawn from Moscow to Kiev? Etc.
Some implementation details
- all application code is executed on the browser side
- for maps and search using Google Maps API v3
- for vector graphics on the map - library Raphaël
- for location determination - W3C Geolocation API , Google Gears or Google IP Geolocation
- jQuery and several jQuery UI components are used (Slider for time, Datepicker for date and Dialog for welcome window)
- jQuery Address plugin is used for deep linking and ajax history
- between sessions the state is saved in cookies
- Wolfram Alpha was surprisingly the most suitable for weather forecasting.
- A page on the UserIdea / Reformal service (which was already covered by its authors on Habré ) was launched for ideas on improvement
What is planned for the future?
- make a mobile version for browsers iPhone and Android
- add time display option in local time zone
- add a slider for days of the year similar to the time slider
- clean up and put the computational part of the code on the githaba
- write for Habr a good article about the nuances of developing such an application
I hope you will find useful use of this little service. I would be very happy impressions and comments in the comments. You can also leave ideas or vote for those already expressed here . Thank!
update: sorry for the problems with hosting, the project temporarily moved to another server - now everything seems fine.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/90164/
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