See exactly where the sun falls on your home and garden
Where the sun sits at any moment follows from orbital mechanics, so it can be worked out exactly — no licensed data, no estimates. Enter an address, set an orientation, and watch light and shadow move through the day and through the year.
Free · No sign-up · Runs entirely in your browser
Sun right now
Loading…Four questions, answered properly
Every one of these is asked by house buyers, gardeners and homeowners every day — and every one of them is solvable with arithmetic rather than opinion.
Sun path & daylight hours
Where the sun rises and sets on any date, how high it climbs at noon, and the full arc it traces overhead. Scrub through the day; jump between solstices.
Open tool →Which way does this room face?
Set the window's compass bearing and see the sunlit patch move across the floor — plus how many hours of direct sun the room gets in each month.
Open tool →Garden & plot shade map
Draw your house, fences, sheds and trees. Watch shadows sweep across the plot, then get a heat map of how many hours of sun each square metre receives.
Open tool →Will solar panels work here?
Pick a roof pitch and bearing, and compare clear-sky yield against the ideal angle for your latitude. See what a north-facing or shaded roof really costs you.
Open tool →Why you can trust the numbers
Most "sun calculators" are wrappers around a weather API. This one isn't. The sun's position is determined by orbital mechanics that have been solved for centuries, so it can be computed exactly, offline, for any point on Earth and any date.
- NOAA solar position algorithm, accurate to about a minute of arc
- Real IANA timezones with daylight saving handled properly
- Atmospheric refraction included, so sunrise times match the almanac
- Nothing about your location is ever sent to us — the maths runs in your browser
Verified against published almanac data
| Place | Date | Computed | Almanac |
|---|---|---|---|
| London | 21 Jun | 04:43 → 21:21 | 04:43 → 21:21 |
| London | 21 Dec | 08:03 → 15:53 | 08:04 → 15:53 |
| New York | 21 Dec | 07:16 → 16:31 | 07:17 → 16:32 |
| Sydney | 21 Dec | 05:40 → 20:05 | 05:41 → 20:05 |
| Reykjavík | 21 Jun | 02:55 → 00:03 | 02:55 → 00:03 |
Differences of under a minute come from rounding and local horizon height, which no published table accounts for either.
Guides
The questions behind the tools, answered in plain language.
Is a north-facing garden really that bad?
What you actually lose, when you lose it, and the parts of the plot that stay sunny.
Read →Which way does my room face?
Three ways to find a window's bearing, and what each orientation feels like to live in.
Read →Will solar panels work on my roof?
How much pitch and bearing really matter — and why shade matters far more.
Read →Popular locations
Sunrise, sunset and sun angles for towns and cities, updated live for today's date.
Common questions
Do I need to enter an exact address?
No. Sun position changes very slowly with distance — moving a kilometre shifts sunrise by a few seconds. A nearby town is close enough for every practical purpose. What matters far more is your local horizon: hills, buildings and trees.
Does this account for clouds and weather?
No, and deliberately so. This tool computes geometry — where the sun is and what it shades. That is exact and never changes. Cloud cover is a forecast, valid for a few days at best. The solar yield tool adds a clear-sky atmosphere model, which is clearly labelled as an idealised upper bound rather than a weather prediction.
Is my location stored or sent anywhere?
The calculations run entirely in your browser. If you type a place name, that text is sent to a public geocoding service to turn it into coordinates; if you enter coordinates directly or use your device's location, nothing leaves your device at all.
Can I use these numbers for planning or legal purposes?
Treat them as a well-founded starting point rather than a survey. Formal daylight and right-to-light assessments use measured building heights and site levels. This tool uses the dimensions you type in, so its answers are exactly as good as your measurements.