A genuine sundial or astrolabe at your home

Key points of Shadows

 Totally free of charge in its entry level

 The simplest tool for designing a sundial or an astrolabe

 Calculates, draws and prints drawings at real scale

 Simulates, displays and animates the shadow of the style

 Data base of 3500 locations with latitude, longitude and time zone

 Exports drawings to other drawing or CAD applications (in DXF or WMF format)

 Plane sundials with polar style of any orientation or reclination

 Analemmatic, cylindrical and bifilar sundials

 Planispheric and universal astrolabes (front and back)

 Rotation of the astrolabe rete and alidade

 Complete solar ephemeris

 Solar diagram with horizon mask

 Graphs of Equation of time

 Optimization of solar pannels orientation

 Complete online help

 Available in 14 languages (EN, FR, DE, IT, ES, PT, BR, DU, GR, HU, PL, RU, SV, CZ)

A large choice of sundial types

Shadows offers a choice among a lot of different types of sundials:

• Plane sundials with polar style (the most classical) for any orientation and reclination
• Analemmatic sundials
• Cylindrical sundials (Armillary ring, shepherd's dial)
• Bifilar sundials (also known as Mitchnik sundials)

Each type is described precisely and can be configured step by step using the Sundial creation Wizard.

You can start with a simple type of sundial (direct south for example) and progressively discover more technical types later.

The sundial is drawn to scale

Vertical due South sundial calculated and drawn by Shadows. The user can add text and images and customise the drawing options. The position of the style is marked with points A (gnomon) and B (polar style).

Once designed on screen, your sundial will be printed to scale on one or several pages depending on its size. Then you just need to reproduce the drawing on the final material. You can also print a template to cut the style, and print the coordinate list to use with a protractor and a ruler.

A sundial designed for your home

The sundials created with Shadows are totally customiseable for your location and the wall declination. The program comes with a database which contains more than 3500 cities from 86 countries over the world, each with its latitude, longitude and time zone. Obviously, you can enter new records in the database, especially using the Google Earth or the Google Maps interface.

You can create sundials for any place on Earth, even in the southern hemisphere. Shadows offers you to create a genuine and accurate sundial you certainly will enjoy more than any ready-made sundial you can find in a garden shop.

Simulation of the shadow

Shadows contains an exciting tool that simulates the shadow of the style for the current instant, or in an animated mode during the day. The program also calculates the shadow cast by a roof, in order to check if the sundial will always be lit all the year long.

The simulation of the shadow can be used during educational activities, to explain variations of the Sun altitude depending on the season, or to introduce astronomy concepts such as inclination of the Earth axis, seasons, etc.

Live demonstration

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