Profile photo of the authorJames Tiplady: Hyperlinks, Etc.

Suncaster

Sunset forecasting for people in offices

Getting fed up of cold days and dark nights some winters ago, I built a Django app that used geolocation and the PyEphem astronomical computation library to work out how long the visitor must wait before they’ll be able to leave work in time to see the sunset.

An antidote to the winter blues everywhere, the site was an instant hit. Not quite a decade later, I decided to rewrite it for the browser using Next.js and the SunCalc library. Simply allow the app to detect your location, select the time you typically leave work, and the app will tell you how long you’ll need to wait before you can enjoy the sunset again (or how long you’ve got left to enjoy it, if you’re still on the right side of winter).

Suncaster