The Photographer's Ephemeris

24/06/2026

Some nasty smoke over Utah and Colorado today. Coming in stronger to the Front Range later this evening.

(This the HRRR Smoke forecast shown in the TPE Web 4.0 preview.)

14/06/2026

Great article on solar eclipse photography, planning, gear, and all from Park Cameras.

Folks in the southeast of England will see a 0.92 magnitude partial eclipse on Aug 12, in the hour before sunset. The farther west you go, the deeper the eclipse (0.96 magnitude in Cornwall), but it's a little earlier, so higher in the sky.

All very well worth photographing - but be sure to bring your solar filters!

In this guide to the next UK Solar Eclipse, we explore how to photograph the 2026 eclipse, plus the filters, solar eclipse glasses and accessories you need.

10/06/2026

A short loop (no sound) demonstrating the new Shot Alignment tool in TPE Web v4 Preview (visit https://next.photoephemeris.com).

This solves the “reverse position search” problem – you know how you want the sun, moon etc. to line up relative to a landmark, and roughly when , but you don’t know where exactly to stand to align the shot.

This places the primary red map pin on the highest summit of the La Sal Mountains and loops through the first minutes of moonrise later this month, June 2026.

The heat map shows a moving time window ( +/- 15 minutes) of where you could stand to catch the moon placed just above and to the right of the summit. Yellow indicates the best aligned positions.

The heat map accounts for line of sight - you'll notice some gaps as the alignment window passes over the uneven terrain of Arches National Park and Castle Valley.

We think this is going to be an amazing tool for moon photographers, eclipse photographers and nightscape/deepscapers – it supports the sun, moon, and any DSO already.

(Shot alignment is an upcoming MAX feature, currently in free preview for PRO subscribers.)

There's a new play button in the top-right of the timeline. Tap it and TPE animates the selected time forward through a looping time window (6-hours by default), so you can watch the sun, moon, shadows, and weather overlays evolve through the day.

After the first play, two more controls slide in next to it:
- Speed: tap to cycle through 1× (realtime), 10×, and 1′ / 5′ / 10′ / 30′ of simulated time per real second
- Repeat: while playing, tap it to set the loop end at the current position, so you can zero in on, say, the first half hour after moonrise and watch just that cycle

Pause any time with the same button. After five cycles it auto-stops at the start, so you won't come back to a still-running simulation.

18/05/2026

We've given our eclipse maps a good clean and polish, with some fresh styling and additional info.

Click anywhere on the map to see the local circumstances for the August 12 eclipse - the maps are interactive, so you can zoom in to exactly your area of interest.

Once you find an interesting spot, click the link on the mini-eclipse graphic to view the full details in TPE.

This map, and hundreds more covering the years 1600 to 2500 are available free on our website. Link in the comments.

02/05/2026

Top tip from photographer Sean Goebel: plan your shoot.

"I spend quite a lot of time using programs such as The Photographer’s Ephemeris, Stellarium, and Google Earth to plan out my Moon photoshoots. Many of the attempts fail, but the reward is a moonrise image that is actually real and hasn’t been composited together."

This is how Astronomy Photographer of the Year participants do it.

Learn how to get started in astrophotography with our step-by-step guide to photographing the Moon

18/04/2026

Photographers love long shadows!

Amongst many other news features, we're adding dynamic map shadows are coming to the 2D maps in TPE Web v4, the next major version.

Below is a short preview video (no audio), showing the reworked UI and and the shadows feature.

08/04/2026

Two years ago today in Mexico – what a day. Thought the clouds might beat us, but no!

Did you see TSE2024 too?