Our ances­tors quar­ried and hauled gar­gan­tu­an stones many miles to build mon­u­ments that could pre­dict where the sun and moon would rise and set. Pho­tog­ra­phers now days have it a lit­tle eas­i­er.

The Pho­tog­ra­pher’s Ephemeris is one tool that com­bines cen­turies of observed astro­nom­i­cal and grav­i­ta­tion­al data with Google maps and shows you in exqusite detail where the sun and moon will be direct­ing their light and the cor­re­spond­ing shad­ows, at any time of the day or night, at any place on earth, even allow­ing for ele­va­tion of the sur­round­ing ter­rain. Well, maybe not every coor­di­nate on earth, yet. I have not test­ed it’s lim­its.

Stephen Train­or is the author of this free pro­gram. An iPod app will also be avail­able on April 17.

Watch­ing the short tuto­ri­als reveals the pow­er of this pro­gram. Mark my words, this is some­thing we all will applaud today, take for grant­ed tomor­row and some will actu­al­ly com­plain about in the future. Since this will actu­al­ly save you time and mon­ey, Stephen pro­vides a dona­tion link to help main­tain the ser­vice. Please con­sid­er con­tribut­ing.

Here is the link to his blog or click the pic­ture above. Thank you Stephen, for mak­ing my life that much sim­pler.