Batch Sun Position and Daylight

Calculate the sun's elevation and azimuth at a specified instant, plus sunrise, sunset, solar noon and daylight duration for each coordinate/timestamp pair. Process up to 1,000 rows in one batch without geocoding, proxies, external data services or AI-generation calls.

Use it to add solar geometry to location datasets, prepare outdoor schedules, compare daylight between sites, or supply an automation with structured sun data.

Use on Apify

1. Click Try for free on this Actor's Store page.
2. Open Input, switch to the JSON editor, and paste a batch using the example below.
3. Click Start and wait for the run to finish.
4. Open Output to view the solar position and daylight table.
5. Use the output download/export controls to save the results as JSON or CSV.

Runs use your account's available credits and the listing's current pricing. Malformed JSON or an invalid coordinate/timestamp is rejected; the batch is validated before any calculation results are written.

Input

{
  "locations": [
    {
      "label": "Greenwich summer noon",
      "latitude": 51.48,
      "longitude": 0,
      "datetime": "2026-06-21T12:00:00Z"
    }
  ]
}

• locations: 1 to 1,000 objects. Output preserves input order.
• latitude: finite decimal degrees from -90 to 90, north-positive.
• longitude: finite decimal degrees from -180 to 180, east-positive.
• datetime: an ISO timestamp including Z or an explicit offset such as -07:00. The instant is converted to UTC. Supported UTC years: 1900–2100.
• label: optional text, at most 200 characters, carried into the result.

Supply coordinates and timezone explicitly. This tool does not infer a location, look up addresses, or detect local timezones or daylight-saving rules.

Output

Each row contains the input coordinates and label, datetime_utc, geometric elevation_degrees, approximate refracted apparent_elevation_degrees, azimuth_degrees measured clockwise from north, zenith_degrees, solar declination and equation of time. It also contains:

Field	Meaning
solar_day	UTC calendar date of the input instant
solar_noon_utc	Calculated solar transit for that solar day
sunrise_utc, sunset_utc	Approximate horizon crossings, or null if absent
daylight_minutes	Calculated interval, 0 during polar night, 1,440 during polar day, or null near an unresolved transition
daylight_state	normal, polar_day, polar_night, or transition
method, method_source	Calculation method and source reference

Daily events are the solar cycle anchored to solar_day; they are not a search for all crossings occurring inside midnight-to-midnight UTC. At large east/west longitudes, sunrise or sunset can be on an adjacent UTC calendar date. Full ISO timestamps retain that date. At the exact geographic poles, or when azimuth is mathematically undefined, azimuth_degrees is null.

Method and limits

The calculation uses NOAA-style Meeus solar equations and a 90.833-degree zenith for sunrise/sunset. Results are approximate and assume a level, unobstructed horizon. Terrain, buildings, observer elevation, local weather, changing atmospheric conditions and shadows are not modeled. The apparent elevation uses an approximate refraction correction. High latitudes and polar transitions need particular care. This is a planning/data utility; no survey, safety-critical or engineering-grade accuracy is claimed.

Reference: NOAA solar calculation details. NOAA notes that its own calculator is no longer actively maintained. This is an independent implementation; it makes no NOAA endorsement claim. Twilight, golden-hour windows, solar-panel modeling and timezone lookup are not included.

Execution and billing

The Actor reads the submitted batch and writes one dataset item per calculated row. Dataset export provides JSON, CSV and other formats supported by Apify. Calculations require no external data service, proxy or AI-generation call. The live Apify Store page determines current availability and pricing.

Apify handles per-result billing through its synthetic apify-default-dataset-item event, once per row written to the default dataset, according to the listing's configured pricing. The calculation code makes no manual charge calls and sets no selling price. Pricing, platform permissions and publication are managed in Apify.