Sun Surveyor (Sun & Moon)

Adam Ratana

About this app

Sun Surveyor takes the mystery out of the sunrise, sunset, and moon phases, allowing photographers and filmmakers to scout the best locations, plan effectively, and get the perfect shot.

The Live Camera View, Interactive Map (with Street View), 3D Compass, and detailed Ephemeris provide a wealth of information about the largest natural light source in the galaxy, as well as the moon, and milky way:

- View augmented reality projections of the sun and moon paths, pinpoint the time the sun or moon will be at a particular location in the sky
- Predict and plan for the golden hour, blue hour and every sunrise, sunset, moonrise and moonset
- Prepare night photography shots with the Milky Way & star trail features

Solar Industry (PV) Professionals, architects, real estate agents, and gardeners will also find a wealth of empowering interactive features:

- Show clients the quality and quantity of seasonal sunlight at a given location
- Understand potential shade of surroundings and discover any obstructions
- Create images of the summer and winter Solstice & Equinox paths for a site

Additional features:

- Photo Opportunities (new!) - an interactive listing of critical times to help inspire and generate shot ideas; including the full moon looming low in the sky during magic hour, total darkness for stargazing, and more
- Position Search (new!) - an extremely powerful tool to search for sun, moon and milky way center positions within various constraints, for the perfectionist planner
- Visual time machine - take a quick glance at the light for a day, or dial in desired compositions easily
- Moon distance, age, apogee, perigee, super moon predictions
- Sun shadow information - calculate the length of shadows cast by objects
- Share details and locations with clients and colleagues
- Offline usage (excludes Map View, Street View) - enter coordinates, save & load locations with no data connection or GPS available
- Measure distance, and difference between elevations, and vertical angle differentials with the Map view
- Import and export Google Earth .kmz/.kml locations
- Magnetic declination compensation
- Widgets - 9 varieties of sun and moon widgets for your homescreen

** NOTE: the Live View and 3D Compass portions of this app make use of your device's compass. Some devices may not have a compass.

Ratings and reviews

I've been using this app for years, and it's never let me down. As a wedding photographer I am often tasked with working in tricky and new situations with challenging light. With this app I can track the position of the sun at any given time, giving my clients magical light that I wouldn't have been able to find without this app. It is so simple, you just hold up the phone to the sky and using VR its tracks the position of the sun in a line, using your camera! So cool and nifty. Well worth it.

March 2023. Update: This is still in my top three apps for dialing in astrophotography planning. 2018: I have a few sky apps. I keep coming back to this one, though. It's the best organized, best compass, most accurate information for my needs. Thank you. Over a year now as a happy customer. :) Update: 8 Apr 18 ...still my go to app. Three days from an epic trip to New Zealand. Sun Surveyor, and Google Earth are my two main tools for shot planning. Best app! Thank you.

Great app for predicting sun positions. I use it all the time for film shoots. The calibration mode is so great to have since compasses are often affected in the city or in buildings, and when worse comes to worst, the street map mode gives practical confirmation of uncertain observations. Only upgrade might be to allow enlarging hour indicators or change their color/give a opaque window, because when looking at the sun in live view, sometimes it's very difficult to read the hours. Thx

What's new

- Android 14+ update: SDK and compatibility updates, minor fixes and tweaks.