Light & Sky Planner

Overview

The Light & Sky Planner is Apex Lucis’s most powerful environmental tool. It calculates the precise position of the sun, moon, and Milky Way for any location, date, and time — using a built-in astronomical engine that works entirely offline.

iPhone iPad/Mac
iPhone

Accessing Light & Sky

  • Environment tab → Light & Sky
  • You can jump straight into Light and Sky from the Location Detail screen.

Controls

At the top of the screen:

  • Date picker — Navigate to any date (past or future)
  • AR View — See the location of the Sun and Moon
  • Sun/Moon Position Map — (see below)

What Is Displayed

Day Timeline

A horizontal bar visualising the whole 24-hour day at a glance:

  • The background is dark navy, representing night.
  • A light blue band overlays the stretch between sunrise and sunset — daytime.
  • An orange band overlays the run-up to sunset — the evening golden hour.
  • If you’re viewing today’s date, a bright vertical NOW marker shows exactly where you are in the day.
  • Hour labels (00:00, 06:00, 12:00, 18:00, 23:00) run along the bottom for reference.

Because the bands are layered, the point where orange overlays blue near the right-hand edge of the day is golden hour itself — the last stretch before sunset.

Sun Detail View

Tap the Sun card to open the Sun Detail sheet:

  • 24-hour sun position chart
  • Current azimuth and altitude
  • Astronomical dawn
  • Nautical dawn
  • Blue hour starts (morning)
  • Civil dawn
  • Golden hour starts (morning)
  • Blue hour ends (morning)
  • Sunrise
  • Golden hour ends (morning)
  • Solar noon
  • Golden hour starts (evening)
  • Sun sets
  • Blue hour starts (evening)
  • Golden hour ends (evening)
  • Civil dusk
  • Blue hour ends (evening)
  • Nautical dusk
  • Astronomical dusk

Moon Detail View

Tap the Moon card to open the Moon Detail sheet:

  • 24-hour moon position chart
  • Moon phase name (New, Waxing Crescent, First Quarter, etc.) and illumination percentage
  • Moonrise and moonset times
  • Current azimuth and altitude
  • Moon age (days since new moon)
  • Days until full moon
  • Days until new moon

Moon Phase Strip

At the bottom of the screen, a horizontal strip shows the moon phase for the next 30 days. Tap any day to jump to that date.

Milky Way Visibility

When the Milky Way is visible from the selected location on the selected night, Apex Lucis shows:

  • Rise time of the Galactic Centre
  • Transit time (when it crosses the meridian — the best position for photography)
  • Set time
  • The azimuth of the Galactic Centre at peak altitude

Note: Milky Way visibility depends on moon phase (the moon must be below the horizon or very close to new), time of year, and latitude. Apex Lucis calculates all three.

Tip: For a visual compass panorama of the Milky Way’s band across the sky — rather than these raw figures — see the Milky Way card on the Environment overview screen.

Sun and Moon Position Map

A full-screen view of an actual map, centred on your location’s pin, with the sun’s path across the sky that day drawn as an arc sweeping out from the pin in true compass directions.

How to read it:

  • Arc width encodes altitude — the arc is thickest where the sun is highest in the sky, tapering to nothing at the horizon.
  • Arc colour encodes light quality — it shifts through night, twilight, golden hour, daylight and blue hour tones along its length, so you can see at a glance where the good light falls.
  • Sun and moon icons sit on the arc at their exact position for the selected time.
  • Slider — drag the slider along the bottom to scrub through the full 24-hour period; the icons move along the arc live as you drag.
  • Moon toggle — show or hide the moon’s position independently of the sun’s.

Sun and Moon position Chart