Sun and Moon Tracker Pro
When you don't want to go out to see if the sun or moon is up.
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Description
About
Sunset, moonrise, today widget, notifcations...
The ultimate Sun, Earth, and Moon app.
• Click on the AR button to see through thet camera lens of your phone.
• Sunrise, sunset for any given date.
• Moonrise, moonset for any given date.
• Today widget for quick view, including rotating arrows that show the direction to the sun and the moon (if they are up.)
• Notifications on rise/set times for the sun, for new/full moon, equinoxes/solstices.
• By swiping the sky view, you change the time and date and the app shows the position of sun and the moon, moon phase, next new or full moon after the chosen date, and how much the daytime has increased since last solstice (December & June) and since Yesterday.
• Swipe fast (fast forward/rewind in time) by using two or three fingers.
• If there is a solar or lunar eclipse, the moon phase text will change to the percentage of the area that intersects.
• Tap once on the sky view to toggle sun and moon path showing their movement in one hour intervals.
• Tap on the ground view to toggle between help text and the calculated data.
And remember, never look directly at the sun.
Background
My motivation for developing a sun and moon app
I came up with the idea of creating my own Sun and Moon Tracker app, one day of the year when Winter was getting closer. I would like to know when the sun set, so I could get the most of the daylight.
I looked at available apps, and some had the features, but none that I liked, that could alert me 30 minutes before sunset (I could use it as a time-to-go alert,) so I decided to create one myself, with local notifications, a widget so I quickly get overview of daylight.
The idea to include the moon was merely because it would be missing without.
I tested various equations to calculate sunrise and sunset, but none of them included the moon, and the results were not super exact - off by some minutes each time. I ended using the equations that I found on here: stjarnhimlen.se. But to test it and see if I had calculated the positions correctly, I figured the app should show the positions of the sun and the moon in relation to my iPhone's direction.
The app utilizes SceneKit, which is Apple's OpenGL implementation (3D environment).
The Pro-app contains a Sun tab with a scrollable list of sunrises sunsets that are calculated as you scroll through the dates, and a Moon tab which shows the dates of the next few new moons and full moons.
Please, visit my social profiles, or send me an email if you have suggestions for improvement, or if you have translation requests.
