Solar Navigation Tools

A circular compass face with N/S/E/W fixed on screen. The sun icon shows where the sun actually is right now based on your GPS and time. Physically turn your whole phone until the on-screen sun icon lines up with the real sun outside. When they match, the dotted line through the middle is your True North–South axis.

Same idea as V1 — rotate your phone to align with the sun — but the screen shows numbers: the sun's current azimuth in degrees from True North, its altitude above the horizon, today's sunrise and sunset times, and a live UTC clock. Has a day/night colour toggle. Responsive layout that works on phone or desktop.

V3 of the Pandora compass. On top of the solar sun-alignment method, you can tap the compass face to bring up a second needle driven by the phone's actual magnetometer chip (the same sensor a regular compass app uses). A M/T toggle corrects that sensor needle from Magnetic North to True North. Lets you compare what the sun says vs what the phone sensor says.

The same compass as Pandora V1, but the background is a beach photo (beach.jpg) instead of a plain dark screen. Everything works identically — rotate your phone, align the sun icon, read True North from the dotted line. The image is just visual; swap beach.jpg for any photo of your own.

A sewing-needle SVG that you drag with your finger. Hold your phone flat, look at your shadow on the ground, then drag the needle's sharp tip to point the same way as that shadow. The app uses the sun's position (from GPS + time) to work backwards to your actual bearing. Type a destination bearing into the TARGET box and a red arrow on the compass shows you which way to turn. The status bar shows: your shadow angle, the sun's azimuth, the reverse-sun angle, and your calculated target. No internet needed.

Same shadow-drag method as the scouts needle compass. The visual differences: the target bearing is shown in very large text on the compass face, a pulsing animated sun sits at the blunt end of the needle and moves as the sun moves through the day, the red target arrow is always visible (not hidden until you set a target), and there is a camera button top-right to screenshot what's on screen.

Visually the same layout as V3g, except the sun icon sits on a curved arc at the top of the compass. The arc represents the sky from east to west — the sun dot moves along it as the day goes on, so you can see at a glance how high or low the sun is. The shadow-drag method and target-bearing feature are identical to V3g.

Identical to the main scouts needle compass in every way except the target readout. Instead of a degree number the result is shown as one of the 16 compass-rose points: N, NNE, NE, ENE, E, ESE, SE, SSE, S, SSW, SW, WSW, W, WNW, NW, NNW.

Same scouts needle compass, same shadow-drag method. The only change is the target readout toggles between an exact degree number (e.g. 247.3°) and a 16-point compass name. A small button on the compass face switches between the two modes. The app saves your last GPS fix and bearing to local storage so it restores them when you reopen it.

A plain-text README page. Explains how the shadow method works step by step, what each number on the status bar means (Current Shadow, Sun, Reverse Sun, Target), the maths behind the solar position calculation, and the expected accuracy of ±0.5° to ±1.5°. Read this first if any of the other compass apps are confusing.

One HTML page that loads three separate tools inside iframes stacked vertically: the Solar Compass V2 (shadow-drag compass) fills the top of the screen; below it a GPS spotter where you enter a destination lat/lng and it calculates the straight-line distance and bearing from your current position; and at the bottom a GPX file parser where you can open a .gpx file from your device and view the recorded track or waypoints. All three work offline.

A reference lookup, not a navigation tool. Pick a date and enter coordinates (or tap 'Use my location'). It calculates and displays: sunrise and sunset times with their compass azimuths, solar noon and sun altitude at noon, all twilight times (civil −6°, nautical −12°, astronomical −18°), how much longer or shorter today is than yesterday, the sun's current declination, the Earth–Sun distance, and the shadow length a 1-metre vertical pole would cast at solar noon. The live sun azimuth and altitude update automatically. Uses the full NOAA Julian-century formula.