suncalc.org

A solar eclipse happens when the Moon passes between the Sun and Earth and casts a shadow onto Earth's surface, blocking some or all of the Sun's light from certain locations. It is only visible where that shadow falls, so the same eclipse can be total in one place, partial in another, and not visible at all elsewhere. To find out when one happens for your location, you need eclipse timing and local visibility data — SunCalc.org is built around sun position and shadow calculations rather than eclipse catalogs, so it is useful for understanding the Sun's geometry on a given day but not as a primary eclipse timetable.

The alignment that produces an eclipse

Three bodies have to line up in a specific order:

1. Sun — the light source.
2. Moon — passes directly between the Sun and Earth.
3. Earth — receives the Moon's shadow on part of its surface.

Because the Moon is much smaller than the Sun but much closer, its shadow narrows to a small spot where it reaches Earth. That spot is the path of totality (or annularity). Outside it, viewers see a partial eclipse; far outside it, nothing.

Why eclipses don't happen every month

The Moon orbits Earth roughly every 29.5 days, so it passes between Earth and the Sun about once a month — yet solar eclipses are rare. The reason is that the Moon's orbit is tilted about 5° relative to Earth's orbit around the Sun. Most months, the Moon passes slightly above or below the Sun-Earth line, so no shadow lands on Earth. An eclipse occurs only when the alignment happens near the points where the two orbital planes cross (the nodes).

The four types of solar eclipse

The difference between total and annular comes down to distance: the Moon's orbit is elliptical, so its apparent size varies. When it is close enough, it covers the Sun fully (total); when it is farther, it leaves a bright ring (annular).

How to check timing and visibility for a location

Eclipse timing depends on where you are, so a general "start time" is not enough. You need the contact times for your coordinates — when the partial phase begins, when totality or annularity starts and ends, and when the event finishes.

A practical workflow:

1. Get the eclipse date and general region from an eclipse catalog or astronomy source.
2. Find your local contact times using a location-aware eclipse tool or an eclipse map that lets you click your position.
3. Check the Sun's altitude and azimuth at those times — if the Sun is below the horizon during the eclipse, you cannot see it from that spot.
4. Confirm weather and horizon obstructions separately; no calculation tool can predict clouds.

Where SunCalc.org fits

SunCalc.org is an online application for sun movement: sunrise, sunset, shadow length, sun position, sun phase, sun height, and sun path, plus photovoltaic data. Its page evidence lists "solar eclipse" among its keywords and shows a live computation path for the Sun with dawn, sunrise, culmination, sunset, dusk, altitude, azimuth, and shadow length for a selected location.

What that means in practice: you can use SunCalc to check where the Sun will be in the sky at a given date and time for your coordinates — altitude and azimuth — which tells you whether the Sun is above the horizon and in which direction to look. It does not, based on the available page evidence, provide eclipse contact times or a dedicated eclipse path map. So treat it as a supporting tool for Sun geometry, not as your eclipse timetable.

If you want to verify shadow behavior around an eclipse, note that shadow length depends on the Sun's altitude: the lower the Sun, the longer the shadow. During a partial eclipse the light dims but the Sun's position does not jump, so shadow direction stays consistent with the Sun's azimuth.

Safe viewing: why you need eye protection

Looking directly at the Sun — eclipsed or not — can cause permanent retinal damage, and the danger is easy to underestimate because a partially eclipsed Sun is still intensely bright and does not hurt immediately.

• Use certified eclipse glasses or handheld solar viewers that meet the ISO 12312-2 standard. Ordinary sunglasses, even stacked, are not safe.
• Never look at the Sun through a camera, binoculars, or telescope without a proper solar filter mounted on the front. The optics concentrate light and can destroy a filter placed at the eyepiece.
• The only safe naked-eye moment is totality — the brief phase when the Moon fully covers the Sun's bright disk. The moment any bright part of the Sun reappears, put the filter back on.
• Indirect methods such as pinhole projection let you watch the partial phases safely without looking up.

Quick answers

Is a solar eclipse visible everywhere at once? No. The Moon's shadow covers only a narrow track, so visibility is location-specific.

Why is a total eclipse so rare at any given place? The path of totality is narrow and Earth's surface is large; a specific city may wait centuries between total eclipses.

Can I use SunCalc.org to find eclipse times? Based on the available page evidence, it computes Sun position, sunrise/sunset, and shadow length for a location — not eclipse contact times. Use it to check Sun altitude and azimuth, and use a dedicated eclipse source for the timetable.

A battle map is a scaled, top-down map used during tabletop RPG encounters to show where characters, monsters, and terrain sit relative to each other. You use one when positioning matters — combat, chases, traps, room-by-room exploration — and skip it for purely narrative scenes. You can make one by drawing terrain in a vector editor, placing assets, then exporting for screen, print, or a virtual tabletop. DungeonFog is one tool built for exactly this workflow.

Battle map vs. world map: what's the difference

These two map types answer different questions, and mixing them up is the most common early mistake.

A battle map zooms in far enough that a single chair or pillar changes your tactics. A world map zooms out far enough that a single chair is invisible. You generally need both over a campaign, but they serve different moments at the table.

When to actually put a battle map down

Reach for a battle map when the answer to "where exactly is everyone?" changes the outcome:

• Combat — line of sight, flanking, area-of-effect spells, and movement speed all depend on position.
• Dungeon crawling — doors, corridors, and room shapes matter for exploration and ambushes.
• Chases and escapes — distance and obstacles drive the tension.
• Stealth and traps — who is standing where determines what gets triggered.

Skip the map for shopping, negotiation, travel montages, and any scene where nobody cares about exact distance. Forcing a grid onto a conversation slows the game down.

How to make a custom battle map

DungeonFog describes a three-step process: create a map, place assets, then export and play. Here's what each step involves and what to expect.

1. Draw the terrain

Start with the layout — dungeon walls, building floor plans, or overland terrain. DungeonFog uses a vector-based editor, which means shapes stay sharp when you scale or print them, rather than turning blurry like a stretched bitmap. Draw the rooms and corridors first; decoration comes later.

2. Place assets

Populate the map with props, furniture, and terrain features. DungeonFog's library lists over 3,000 assets spanning different time periods and settings, and new asset packs are released monthly as part of its premium content subscription. Search the library for the pieces that match your story rather than settling for whatever's closest.

3. Export and play

You can play with others inside DungeonFog itself, or export and print the map. Exporting is where your earlier choices pay off — a vector map holds up at print resolution, and a well-scaled grid keeps tokens aligned.

Key considerations before you commit

• Grid scale. Decide your squares-per-inch (or per-5-feet) before you draw, not after. Changing it later means redoing the layout.
• Resolution. If you plan to print, you need higher resolution than for on-screen play. Vector output helps here.
• Asset library size. A bigger library means less time hunting for the right prop — but also more browsing. Check whether the library covers your campaign's setting (fantasy, modern, horror, etc.).
• Where you'll play. On screen, printed, or inside a virtual tabletop each has different export needs.

Ways to play with your map

• On screen — display the map on a TV or monitor laid flat or mounted, and move physical minis on top.
• Printed — export at print resolution and tile the pages for a physical battle mat.
• In a virtual tabletop — play with others inside DungeonFog, or export the file for use in your VTT of choice.

The practical takeaway

If you only need a quick sketch, paper and a marker still work. If you want reusable, high-detail maps that survive printing and scaling, a vector editor with a large asset library saves real time across a campaign. DungeonFog fits that second case — free to sign up, with premium memberships and a marketplace for additional content. Check the pricing page for current tiers before committing, since asset packs and premium features sit behind that subscription.

SunCalc.org is a free browser-based sun calculator that shows, for any place and date, the sun's path across the sky along with sunrise, sunset, culmination, altitude, azimuth, and shadow length. You set a location on an interactive map or by entering coordinates, pick a date, and drag a time slider to watch the sun move. It works for planning photography, checking whether a spot gets shade at a given hour, sizing a solar panel setup, or just understanding how the sun behaves at your latitude across the year.

Setting Your Location

The calculator needs a place before it can compute anything. You have two ways to give it one:

• Click the map. The interactive map centers on your chosen point, and the coordinates update automatically.
• Enter coordinates directly. Use the Lat and Lon fields to type a latitude and longitude, then apply them with the Set Lat/Lon control.

After the location is set, confirm the time zone (TZ) and the DST setting. These matter because sunrise and sunset are reported in local clock time — if the time zone or daylight-saving flag is wrong, every time in the output shifts. The panel also shows the location's height (elevation) and a UTM coordinate, which are useful if you're matching the tool against survey or mapping data.

Picking a Date and Moving Through the Day

Use the month selector (Jan through Dec) and the date range controls to choose the day you care about. Then move through the day with the time slider:

• Drag the sun on the slider with the mouse, or
• Use the arrow keys on your keyboard for finer steps.

The colors on the time slider represent the sunlight phase during the day, so you can see at a glance when it's dark, when the sun is low, and when it's high. There's also a LIVE mode that tracks the sun in real time; click STOP-LIVE to end it and return to manual control.

Reading the Output

Once a location and time are set, the panel reports the day's key solar events and the sun's current position:

The shadow length figure is tied to an object height you specify (the "at an object level [m]" input). Set the height of the object — a person, a building, a pole — and the tool returns how long its shadow will be at the selected time. This is the number to check when you want to know whether a wall, tree, or neighboring building will shade a spot at 3 p.m. in June.

Understanding the Sun-Path Curve

The map draws the sun's trajectory as a thin yellow curve. Two things to read from it:

• The curve itself is the sun's path for the selected day.
• The yellow band around it shows how that path shifts across the whole year — the spread between the shortest and longest days.

The closer a point on the curve is to the center of the display, the higher the sun is above the horizon. So a curve that bulges far toward the center means a high summer sun; a flatter curve hugging the edge means a low winter sun. Comparing the band's edges tells you how much the sun's path changes between seasons at your latitude.

Reverse Calculation and Photovoltaic Data

Two extra features handle more specific tasks:

• Reverse Calculation works backward from a shadow to the object or angle that produced it — useful when you've measured a shadow and want to infer the sun position or object height.
• Photovoltaic section reports solar constant, air mass, and irradiance for the selected location and time. These are the inputs you'd want when estimating how much sunlight a panel would receive, rather than just where the sun is.

The panel also lists astronomical values such as declination, right ascension, GMST, GHA, JDE, and DeltaT, plus the dates of the equinoxes and solstices. These are reference figures for anyone doing more precise solar or astronomical work.

Printing and Saving Results

The tool offers three print options: Print – Current Data, Print – Data this day, and Print – Current Map. Use these to keep a record of a specific moment, a full day's solar table, or the map view with the sun path drawn on it.

Practical Notes

• If times look off by an hour, recheck the DST setting first — it's the most common source of confusion.
• The shadow length depends entirely on the object height you enter, so set that before reading the number.
• The site also links to companion tools for the moon (mooncalc.org), planets (planetscalc.org), and satellites (orbtrack.org) if you need the same kind of position data for other objects.
• A German-language version is available at sonnenverlauf.de.

Shadow length is the ground distance from the base of an object to the tip of its shadow. For a vertical object on flat ground, it equals the object's height divided by the tangent of the sun's altitude angle: shadow length = height ÷ tan(altitude). The lower the sun sits in the sky, the longer the shadow. You can get this number for any place, date, and time with a sun calculator such as SunCalc.org, which reports "Shadow length [m]" alongside the sun's altitude and azimuth.

The core relationship

Two inputs determine shadow length:

• Object height — how tall the thing casting the shadow is.
• Sun altitude — the angle of the sun above the horizon at that moment.

The formula follows from a right triangle: the object is the vertical side, the shadow is the horizontal side, and the sun's altitude is the angle at the shadow's tip.

At very low altitudes the shadow grows without bound, which is why shadows stretch out dramatically near sunrise and sunset.

Shadow direction

Length tells you how far the shadow reaches; azimuth tells you which way it points. The shadow falls on the opposite side of the object from the sun. If the sun's azimuth is due south, the shadow points due north. SunCalc reports azimuth as part of its solar data, so you can pair it with the shadow length to place a shadow on a map or plan.

Getting shadow length from SunCalc

SunCalc.org shows the sun's movement and sunlight phases for a chosen day and place, and its solar data panel includes a Shadow length [m] field.

1. Set the location — enter latitude and longitude, or use the map to pick a point.
2. Set the date and time — choose the day and drag the time slider (mouse or arrow keys) to the moment you care about.
3. Read the solar data — the panel lists dawn, sunrise, culmination, sunset, dusk, daylight duration, distance, altitude, azimuth, and shadow length.
4. Use the object height field — the panel shows shadow length "at an object level [m]," so you supply the height and the tool returns the corresponding shadow length.
5. Reverse the calculation if needed — a reverse calculation option lets you work backward from a known shadow to another value.

The time slider also colors the day's sunlight phases, and the yellow curve traces the sun's path, so you can see how altitude changes across the day and how that drives shadow length.

Practical uses

• Photography — long low-angle shadows near sunrise and sunset create dramatic depth; knowing the length helps you frame a subject.
• Solar panel siting — panels and nearby structures cast shadows that reduce output; shadow length at low sun angles shows how far shading reaches.
• Outdoor shade planning — awnings, trees, and buildings cast predictable shadows you can size against a patio or seating area.
• Architecture and landscaping — checking shadow reach at different seasons helps place windows, overhangs, and plantings.

Limits to keep in mind

The formula assumes flat ground and a vertical object. Real conditions change the result:

• Sloped terrain shortens or lengthens the visible shadow.
• A tilted object casts a shadow that no longer matches the simple height ÷ tan(altitude) rule.
• Obstacles, buildings, and vegetation can block or merge shadows.
• Atmospheric refraction slightly shifts the sun's apparent position near the horizon.

Treat the calculated value as the ideal-case length, then adjust for the actual site.