RefreshingApps.com

Ephemeris is an Adobe AIR application for photographers, primarily those who take landscape vista’s and need to calculate accurately the times of sunrise and sunset to achieve that perfect shot.

Landscape photographers typically wish to plan their shoots around the times of sunrise/sunset or twilight, or alternatively when the moon is in a particular place in a particular phase.

This is what Ephemeris is designed for. It combines a Google map with lot’s of geo data and shows you visually the directions of Ephemeris times as well as detailed data at your chosen location. Enter a place on the map and then add it to your locations for Ephemeris to remember. By setting the date you can calculate exact times for moon and sun rise and set.

I love my photography but I’m not at the level to fully appreciate how the useful this kind of tool can be.

The app includes configurations setting to tune how the information is displayed and a glossary so you can get up to speed on the lingo of things like moon phase time. A full set of keyboard shortcuts is also employed for speed users and a full detailed list together with a tutorial can be found on the developers site here.

While times of sunrise etc. are readily available on various sites on the internet (direction of sunrise etc. less so, but still readily found), there are fewer programs available which combine such information with a topographical map allowing the photographer to match the astronomical to the location.

Design eye

I love the look and feel of this application as it is different and conveys the message of the AIR applications intentions well. This could have been really plain and uninteresting but the designer and developer have done a really nice job. The background finished off the app while the Ephemeris items containing the sunrise and sunset times make the data interesting drawing you in.

That said there are a few buttons not styles that retain the Flex Halo standard focus color and within the glossary when you highlight some text with the cursor the blue Halo highlight appears.

Technical eye

Built using Adobe Flex and the AIR framework.

A number of webservices were utilised in the construction of the Ephemeris including Geonames and Chronos Date Time library, plus other astronomical sources refer to the About tab for details.

In summary

A perfect application for all landscape photographers out there, it’s free so load it up onto your lappy and get out there to take some stunning vista’s using this AIR app to guide you at sunrise or set.

If your not that keen a photographer it’s worthy of the download to play with adding places into the map and seeing the directions! Great work.