Sunrise Sunset Twilight in-flight

To calculate the position of the sun you will find many programs, but with SuninFlight you can calculate sunrise, sunset or twilight during a flight at any altitude.
Are you a pilot? You want to give your passengers information for sunrise, sunset or twilight? You are just interested in astronomy? You want to know when twilight starts (Imsak prayer time) or when it ends? This is the program!


Example

A flight from Chicago O'Hare, USA to Abu Dhabi, UAE, February 10 2011
Waypoint 1: N 41°58'53.94"/W 87°54'24.02 " enter:N 4158.9 W 8754.4
Takeoff ORD: 20:10LT = UTC HHMM enter: 0210
Waypoint 2: N 24°25'59.00"/E 54°39'04.00 " enter:N 2426 E 5439.1
Landing AUH: 19:21LT = UTC HHMM enter: 1521
Altitude feet enter: 37000 Date February 10 2011 enter:10022011

 
The result shows that a sunrise and a sunset will occur during your flight. The 2 events are shown in the lower part of the screen. The upper part shows the sun elevation and azimuth at waypoint 1 (Chicago at 0210 UTC), the same information is shown for waypoint 2 (Abu Dahbi at 1518 UTC). Note that the sun is below the horizon at both waypoints at the specified time. Also displayed is the distance, speed and initial true track between the 2 points.
The calculation is accurate along the great circle between the 2 points, as shown with the remark: Accurate along great circle only! Select closer waypoints for better accuracy.
Your flight will most probably not follow the great circle, so you will have to select the waypoints closer together. This flight followed a more southerly route to profit from tailwinds. The waypoints selected for this particular flight were:
Waypoint 1: N 55°00'00.00"/W 20°00'00.00 " enter:N 5500.0 W 2000.0
at 07:36 UTC enter: 0736
Waypoint 2: N 53°28'00.00"/W 5°30'00.00 " enter:N 5328.0 W 530.0
at: 08:33 UTC enter: 0833
Altitude and date remain the same.
Since you actually flew ~8.5 degrees more to the south then the great circle between departure and destination, the sunrise will occur 13 minutes earlier. The sunset can be finetuned in the same manner. 		 



email link: info@suninflight.amcos.ch