GoldenLight is a planning app for landscape photographers — it tells you where to stand,
when to be there, and whether the sky will be worth the drive. This guide walks through
every core surface: the map, the calendar, the color forecast, and the condition chips.
No prior experience assumed.
Five tabs along the bottom. Everything in this guide lives in one of them.
HomeYour dashboard — greeting, best-shot forecast, and a grid of condition chips (Weather, Aurora, Night Sky, Waves, and more). Each chip is a live summary; tap it for the full detail sheet.
CalendarMonth view of moon phases and Milky Way visibility for your selected location, with a per-day detail card.
Map ScoutThe satellite map. Save pins, place camera and subject markers, run alignment searches, and scrub time to see where the sun, moon, and Milky Way will be.
ConditionsThe Lumen Score — a 0–100 sunrise and sunset color forecast for every location you monitor.
PlansSaved shoots. Every "Save as Plan" in the app lands here, with date, location, scores, and a View on Map button that restores everything.
The 10-minute setup: open Map Scout, save a pin at a spot you shoot,
turn on Monitor Conditions on that pin, and the whole app comes alive — the pin appears in
Conditions, the chips, and every location picker. Sections 3–4 show you how.
Map Scout — the map
Scout locations, place pins, and time-travel the sky
Map Scout is a satellite map with a photographer's toolkit layered on top.
Search for a place or pan to it, drop pins, and use the time scrubber at the bottom to see
exactly where the sun, moon, and Milky Way will sit at any moment — today or a year out.
Map Scout — pins, azimuth lines, the sky dome, and the scrubber below
The tool strip (right edge)
Three button groups run down the right side of the map:
Align · Event · ScoutThe three alignment searches — same + icon, different colors (blue / green / purple). Covered in their own guide: Settings → Learn → Alignment Quick Start.
Subj · Pin · CamSubj (gold) places the Subject pin — the landmark you're shooting. Pin (white) saves an Interest Pin — your general-purpose saved location (section 3). Cam (red) places the Camera pin, where you'll stand.
GPS · HorizonGPS re-centers on your location. Horizon opens Horizon Profile — a 3D render of the terrain from your camera pin.
PerchInside Horizon Profile, the rotate icon (top right) switches to a 3D orbit of the terrain — a Google Earth-style look around your pin. One finger drags across the ground, two fingers up or down tilt, twist two fingers to rotate, pinch to zoom (past the closest distance the view keeps tightening like a telephoto — the header shows the equivalent lens), and double-tap to snap the pivot back to your camera pin. The terrain is lit by the real sun at the scrubbed time, complete with shadows, and by the moon after dark. Your camera pin, subject pin, saved pins, Scout candidates and Event stand points all sit on the terrain with labels: tap one for actions (orbit around it, use it as camera or subject, set a candidate as your camera pin, jump to an Event kiss time), or tap bare ground to move your camera pin there. With a subject set, a line of sight and sun/moon rays show the alignment moment. Tap the icon again to return to the viewfinder.
The tool strip — alignment searches on top, then the pin tools and Cam, with GPS and Horizon below
Placing anything: the crosshair reticle
Every pin places the same way — no fat-finger taps:
Tap the pin button you want (Subj, Pin, Cam, or Scout). Crosshairs appear at the center of the map.
Pan the map so the crosshairs sit exactly on your target — your finger never covers it. A banner at the top confirms the mode: "Pan map to position · Tap Place to confirm".
Tap the red Place button (the Cam slot turns into it). Tap Cancel to back out.
The reticle — pan the map under the crosshairs, tap the red Place
The time scrubber
The panel above the tab bar is a time machine. Drag the graph left or right
and the entire map re-computes for that moment — sun and moon positions, azimuth lines, everything.
HeaderThe current scrubbed date and time. Chevrons jump a full day; tap the date for a date picker with a "Now" button to snap back to the present.
ReadingsThree live columns — Sun, Moon, Milky Way — each with compass direction (azimuth), height above the horizon (altitude), and a status badge. The second line shows the day's rise ↑ and set ↓ times in the order they happen, and when the Milky Way's "Prime" window starts.
GraphSun (gold) and moon (pale blue) altitude curves across the day. The background bands show daylight, golden hour glow, twilight, and night. Purple bands mark Milky Way prime windows.
The scrubber — the readings row with rise/set times, sun and moon altitude curves, and the sky-phase bands behind them
Azimuth lines — reading the map
Select a pin and colored lines radiate from it. Thick dashed lines are the day's
fixed anchors; thin bright lines move as you scrub time:
SunriseGold dashed — where the sun comes up today.
SunsetOrange dashed — where it goes down.
MoonPale blue dashed — moonrise and moonset directions.
Milky WayPurple dashed — the galactic core's peak direction tonight.
Live positionThin bright lines (yellow sun, ice-blue moon, purple core) track each body at the scrubbed time — they fade out when the body is below the horizon.
Azimuth lines — sunrise gold, sunset orange, moon pale blue, Milky Way purple; solid yellow tracks the live sun
Camera + Subject: the FOV cone
Place a Cam pin and a red lens cone spreads out from it — the wedge of
landscape your lens will frame. Add a Subj pin and the cone snaps to aim at the subject
automatically. The badge on the cone's center line shows the focal length (52mm in the shot
below); drag the cone's edge handles to widen or tighten the framing and the badge recomputes.
From here the ··· menu offers Save as Plan and Horizon Profile for the pair.
Camera at Sparks Lake, subject on South Sister — the red cone shows exactly what the lens will frame
The ··· menu
The dropdown in the top corner holds the rest. Map Legend explains everything drawn on the map — every line, dot and circle — and Full Guide opens this document. Below those: Save as Plan (captures the current pins + scrubbed time), Update Plan once a plan is loaded, Horizon Profile, map style (Standard / Satellite / Hybrid), a Night Sky submenu (the sky dome, the Milky Way band, sun and moon markers, and meteor-shower radiants), and the map layers — Cloud Cover (forecast cloud for the scrubber time, up to 7 days out, drawn as a wash, turning blue where that cloud is raining and marked with a bolt where the forecast calls for thunder; pick High, Mid, Low, or all with the bar above the timeline), Light Pollution (night-sky brightness on the Bortle scale, from satellite night-lights — the glow of towns spreads over the land around them; a pin's card also reads its Bortle class), Public Lands (who manages the ground — BLM, National Forest, National Park, state and so on, US only; a pin's card reads it too), Wildflower Blooms and Active Fires. The bar under the search field names the plan you're working on ("Untitled 1" until you save it) alongside the scrubbed date and time.
Saved pins
Your personal library of shooting locations — the foundation everything else builds on.
A saved pin is a named spot on the map that survives between sessions. Saved pins
show as white dots with their name underneath. Three ways to create one:
The Pin button — tap Pin in the tool strip, aim the reticle, tap Place. It saves instantly with an automatic name ("Interest Pin 3") — rename it right away to something real.
Search — search for a place with the search bar, tap the result, and choose Save Pin from the action sheet.
From a search result dot — Event and Scout searches offer "Save as Interest Pin" / "Save Pin" on their result cards, so a spot the app found for you becomes permanent.
The pin card
Tap any saved pin to open its card:
DetailsLatitude, longitude, and the pin's elevation (from terrain data).
Sun & MoonRise ↑ and set ↓ times at this exact spot, for the day the scrubber is on — scrub to next Saturday and the card shows Saturday's times, with a small date chip so you know.
Monitor ConditionsThe toggle that plugs this pin into the rest of the app — next section.
Mark as StructureFor lighthouses, towers, and buildings — give the pin a height and type, and it renders as a silhouette in Horizon Profile and becomes a precise alignment target (aim at its top, middle, or base).
Use as Camera / SubjectFeed this pin straight into the alignment tools without re-placing it.
Rename · Move · DeleteRename gives it a real name; Move re-opens the reticle to nudge its position; Delete removes it.
The pin card — position, elevation, sky darkness, who owns the land, sun and moon times, and every action
Monitoring a pin
One toggle turns a map pin into a location the whole app watches.
On any saved pin's card, switch on Monitor Conditions. The pin turns
gold on the map, and from that moment:
ConditionsThe pin appears in the Conditions tab with its own sunrise and sunset Lumen Scores, updated automatically.
Chips & sheetsIt joins the location picker in the Weather, Night Sky, Aurora, Storm, and Waves detail sheets — so you can check any of them at that spot, not just where you're standing.
HomeIt can drive the Color Score chip — pick it in Home's location pill and the chips read that spot.
Rule of thumb: monitor the handful of places you actually drive to.
Every monitored pin is a location the app fetches forecasts for, and the Conditions list is
most useful when it's your real shortlist. Un-monitoring a pin doesn't delete it — it just
goes back to being a quiet white pin.
A monitored pin glows gold on the mapMonitor Conditions on — this pin now feeds Conditions, the chips, and the location pickers
Conditions — the Lumen Score
Will the sky be worth the drive?
The Conditions tab answers one question for every location you monitor:
how good will the color be at sunrise and at sunset? The answer is the Lumen Score —
0 to 100, computed separately for each event from real forecast physics: the cloud canvas
overhead, whether the horizon has a clear gap for light to come through, air clarity, and
whether terrain blocks the sun.
Score
Tier
Read it as
80–100
Epic
Drop everything.
60–79
Great
Worth the drive.
40–59
Good
Promising — watch it.
20–39
Fair
Maybe, if it's close.
0–19
Poor
Sleep in.
Honest by design: most days genuinely score low — a bluebird clear sky
has nothing for the light to paint, and it scores accordingly. When GoldenLight says 80, it means it.
The list
Your current location plus every monitored pin. Each card carries its tier
word under the name, a sunrise meter and a sunset meter with event times, and a one-line reading
of the sky ("High cloud canvas — brilliant color likely"). The small teal tag next to each score
tells you which day that prediction is for: TODAY, TONIGHT, or a weekday once tonight's
event has passed and the forecast rolls to tomorrow. A banner at the top calls out the single
best chance across all your locations.
The Conditions list — best-chance banner, sort chips, dual meters with event times and TUE / TONIGHT day tags
The detail sheet
Tap a location. The toggle at the top switches everything between sunrise and
sunset analysis:
Score ringThe headline verdict, with a one-line explanation of what's driving it.
Field readingsThree bars that report the sky like a forecast, not score math: Canvas (how much cloud is overhead to catch color), Horizon Gap (is the corridor toward the sun open, partially blocked, or walled off), and Atmosphere (air clarity). Readings, not addends — they don't sum to the ring.
Conditions at the eventThe forecast temperature, feels-like, cloud, visibility, and wind at the sunrise or sunset hour — not right now. Below it, the cloud splits into layers labeled by what each does to color: High — catches color · Mid — diffuses light · Low — blocks color, and a gold tip line tells you how to shoot it.
Golden hourTonight's window, defined the way photographers mean it — from the sun at +6° down to −4° — with the real duration for your latitude and season.
Next 5 DaysTomorrow through five days out, scored with the same engine and toggleable between sunrise and sunset. Each card's sky word (Clear, High cloud, Low cloud…) describes the layer that matters, per event.
Moon TonightPhase, illumination, rise/set — and what it means for night shooting.
View on Map ScoutJumps straight to this pin on the map, azimuth lines and all.
The detail sheet — 56% GOOD for tonight's sunset: partial canvas, corridor wide open, clear airLower half — cloud layers with their color roles, the shooting tip, Next 5 Days, Moon Tonight
Rate the sky
After a sunrise or sunset has passed, Home shows a Rate the Sky card asking how it actually went. It never shows you the score first — you pick a tier (Didn't watch · Poor · Good · Epic), and only then does it reveal what the app had predicted. That order is deliberate: a rating you give after seeing the number is worth nothing. If you were somewhere other than the default, tap Watched from and pick the right location. Every rating goes into the score log, and the log is what the scoring engine is tuned against — the export lives behind the log icon at the top of Conditions.
Rate the Sky — blind by design: pick a tier before the app shows you what it predicted
Pin Alerts
The score comes to you — a notification only when the light is worth chasing.
Most days you open the app because you already have time to shoot. Pin Alerts is
for the other days — the ones where an epic sunset happens while your phone is in your pocket.
Turn it on in Settings → Alerts, set how good it has to be, and the app watches your
monitored pins and says nothing until one of them clears the bar.
Sunset alertArrives ahead of tonight's sunset — four hours by default, early enough to change your plans and drive. It's tied to the sunset itself, not to a fixed clock, so it lands mid-afternoon in December and early evening in June without you touching anything. Adjustable from two to six hours.
Sunrise alertArrives the evening before, 7:00 pm by default, because four hours before a sunrise is the middle of the night. It scores tomorrow morning, so you know whether to set the alarm.
Two thresholdsOne for each event — 70 for sunrise and 80 for sunset to start with. Below the bar you hear nothing, which is the whole point.
Watched pinsYour monitored pins (section 4), all switched on by default. Turn off any you don't want to hear about — a pin you monitor for planning isn't always one you'd drive to tonight.
One notificationNot one per pin. If three spots clear the bar you get a single alert listing them, best first, with each one's score and event time. Tapping it opens that location in Conditions.
Picking a threshold: on a roster of around ten pins, 70 finds you
something most days — good for someone who wants every decent option. 80 fires closer to
one day in four, and those are the evenings worth rearranging your plans for. Start at 80 if
you'd rather be told rarely and mean it; drop to 70 if the app is too quiet for your taste.
The honest part: alerts are best-effort while the app is in the
background. iOS decides when a backgrounded app is allowed to wake up and check — that's a
system rule, not a setting. Opening GoldenLight at any point during the day guarantees that
day's alerts get scheduled, and force-quitting the app (swiping it away) stops background
checks entirely. The forecast isn't perfect either, so the app won't catch every great sky.
Calendar
Moon phases and Milky Way nights, a month at a glance
The Calendar shows the month for your selected scout location — the header
names it, and it follows whatever pin you've selected in Map Scout (or your GPS position when no
pin is active). A legend under the month title decodes the dots; each day cell carries:
Moon symbolThat night's phase, per day.
Blue dotThe Milky Way core is visible that night.
Gold dotYou have a planned shoot that day.
Tap a day for the detail card: the sun's arc with sunrise and sunset times,
the Moon Tonight card, and the full Milky Way timetable — the same shootable-window
headline, timeline bars, and rise/set table described in the Night Sky section below, computed
for that specific date. Long-press a day to start a plan for it.
September at Sparks Lake — moon phase on every day, blue Milky Way dots, gold dots where a plan sitsThe day card — a 14% moon, so tonight has a real Milky Way window, and the timeline shows why
Home & the chips
Your dashboard — every condition, one glance
Home opens with a greeting and the golden-hour countdown ("Golden hour in
9h 21m"), a location pill showing which spot the chips are reading, and then the chip grid:
live summary tiles, each backed by a full detail sheet. Tap a chip to open it. Color Score
leads the grid with the next sunrise or sunset at whichever location the pill names.
The avatar in the corner opens your profile.
Chip
What it summarizes
Color Score
The Lumen Score at the location in the pill — sunrise or sunset, whichever is better.
Weather
Current conditions; the sheet has the hour-by-hour cloud and wind forecast (section 8).
Fog & Mist
Fog likelihood at your monitored pins — valley mist mornings.
Storm Drama
Convective drama potential — the dramatic-sky index, not a severe-weather warning.
Night Sky
Tonight's Milky Way shootable window (section 9).
Aurora
Live Kp · Bz and a four-state go/no-go pill (section 10).
Smoke
Air quality for photography — is the haze going to kill your distant ridges?
Waves
Coastal swell and tide drama at your coastal pins (section 11).
Bioluminescence
Sea-sparkle favorability at your coastal pins — conditions, never a promise.
Flora
What's blooming near you, from live observation data.
Exposure · Compass · AR
Field tools — exposure calculator, declination-corrected compass, AR viewfinder.
Lens Tools
Depth-of-field, hyperfocal, panorama, and star-trail calculators (section 12).
Your Plans · Settings
Shortcuts to the Plans tab and Settings.
Make it yours: Settings → Customize Home lets you reorder
the chips and hide the ones you don't use.
Home — greeting, golden-hour countdown, the location pill, and the live chip gridThe rest of the grid — bioluminescence, flora, exposure, lens tools, plans, compass, AR and settings
Weather
The chip shows now. The sheet shows the hour that matters.
Tap the Weather chip for the full sheet. The location pill under the header
switches between your current location and any monitored pin. Top to bottom:
Hourly stripThe key move: tap any hour and the Cloud Cover and Wind cards below retarget to that hour — check the 7 PM clouds at 2 in the afternoon. The selected hour glows gold; tap it again to return to now.
Cloud CoverSplit into high / mid / low layers — the split photographers actually need. High cloud catches sunset color; low cloud blocks it.
WindSustained speed with a direction arrow (pointing where the wind is headed), the compass "from" direction, and a gust pill that changes color as gusts threaten tripod stability.
7-Day + tipThe week ahead, plus a shooting-window suggestion based on the day's pattern.
Weather — 12 PM tapped in the hourly strip; the Cloud Cover card retargets, gold-tagged, layers split high / mid / lowLight quality, the Wind card at the selected hour, and the air aloft that decides whether fog holds
Night Sky
One question, answered: is there a shootable Milky Way window tonight?
A shootable window needs three things at once: the sky fully dark (sun 18° below
the horizon), the galactic core above the horizon, and the moon below it. The Night
Sky sheet finds the longest stretch tonight where all three hold — that window is the verdict.
Headline"Window: 12:30 AM – 3:55 AM" in purple when there is one; a plain-English reason when there isn't ("The moon is up the entire dark window").
TimelineFour stacked bars across the night — Astro Dark, Moon Up, MW Core, and the gold Shootable bar where they line up. You can see at a glance why tonight works or doesn't.
Moon TonightThe same moon card as Conditions and Calendar — phase, illumination, rise/set, and the night-shooting advice line.
Times tablePrecise rise ↑ / set ↓ times for the moon and the core, plus dark start/end, sunset and sunrise.
Next moonless windowWhen tonight's a bust, a card tells you the next night that isn't.
This weekA seven-night strip with each night's window (or ⊘), and a BEST badge on the longest one.
Season note: at Pacific Northwest latitudes the core season runs
roughly March (pre-dawn) through October. In winter the sheet will honestly say the core isn't
observable — that's the sky, not a bug.
Night Sky — tonight's Milky Way window, the moon that allows it, and the timeline that shows why
Aurora
Live space weather, translated into "do I go outside or not."
The chip shows the two numbers that matter — Kp (global geomagnetic
activity) and Bz (the solar wind's magnetic tilt) — plus a pill that does the
interpretation for you. When a solar eruption (CME) is on its way, a gold line on the chip
counts down to impact.
Pill
Meaning
Quiet
Nothing happening at your latitude. Sleep.
Watch
Activity building — get somewhere dark with a clear northern horizon.
Active
Aurora likely visible from your location. Set up now.
Go Now
Major storm in progress. Drop what you're doing.
The one concept to learn: Bz is the door. When Bz is south
(negative), solar wind energy pours in and aurora becomes possible even at modest Kp. When Bz
is north, the door is shut no matter how big the numbers look.
The sheet goes deep, top to bottom:
The app's readA one-line synthesized verdict at the very top ("STANDBY — 4 CMEs inbound · Bz north 50 min") with a photographer's disclaimer: trust your eyes over it.
Polar mapThe live aurora oval (NOAA's OVATION model) with your pin projected on it, and the headline: the aurora probability at your location.
Live activityThe Kp·Bz hero, a 6-hour Bz trend chart with a Frozen / Thawing / Ramped meter (is the door opening?), solar-wind tiles (Bt · wind speed · density · Boulder K · hemispheric power · Dst), and a satellite magnetometer tile that watches for substorms — the sudden brightenings that make the show.
ImminentRecent solar flares (72h) and inbound CME cards — each with a countdown to forecast arrival, then a measured strength readout once it hits.
Color forecastGoldenLight's own model of which colors are likely tonight — green, red, purple — each with a likelihood, plus the physics of why.
Tonight's windowBest viewing time (darkness ∩ magnetic midnight ∩ moon down), true-north heading, moon and cloud cards.
Multi-day outlookThree days of Kp forecast in 3-hour bins, with your night hours highlighted.
The Aurora chip — Kp · Bz, the QUIET pill, and the gold inbound-CME lineAurora, top of the sheet — the app's read, your local odds on the live OVATION oval, Layer 1 live activity
A live storm sequence in Layer 2 — an M-class flare and four inbound CMEs, the nearest 3h 25m out
Waves
Swell, tide, and drama for your coastal pins.
Waves needs a monitored pin on the coast — it reads open-ocean swell and
NOAA tide predictions for that spot. (An inland pin will politely show nothing; that's expected.)
HeroThe week's biggest swell moment, led by the real numbers: swell height and tide height at that moment, with the day, time, swell period and direction, and that day's sunset. On a flat week it honestly reads "3 ft" — no manufactured hype.
Day rowsThe week ahead — each day with its character ("peak · flat") and a drama rating that blends wave energy with tide phase.
Tap a dayIt expands into the full picture: the day's 24-hour tide curve from the nearest NOAA station, with high/low dots and times, plus a three-hourly table of tide height and direction, swell (height @ period, from-direction), and wind — plan your sea-stack foregrounds and your escape route off the beach.
Safety first: the tide curve tells you when the beach you walked out on
stops existing. Always check the incoming tide before committing to a spot below the high-tide line.
A day expanded in Waves — the NOAA tide curve plus the three-hourly tide · swell · wind table
Lens Tools
The lens math, solved — DoF, hyperfocal, panorama, and star trails.
Four calculators in one sheet, sharing your sensor format (Full Frame,
APS-C 1.5×, APS-C Canon 1.6×, or Micro 4/3 — pick once, it sticks) and lens settings.
Tap any big number to type an exact value — a typed value is never rounded away.
DoFSet focal length, aperture, and focus distance — get the near and far limits of sharpness, the split in front of and behind your subject, and the hyperfocal distance. When the far limit says ∞, it means it.
HyperfocalThe classic reference table — focal lengths × full-stop apertures, in your chosen units. Focus at the hyperfocal distance and everything from half that distance to infinity is sharp.
PanoFrames, rows, and the rotation increment for a stitched panorama — set orientation, overlap, sweep, and (for multi-row) a vertical span. 360° panos get even spacing, with the actual overlap shown.
StarsThe NPF rule: your longest shutter before stars visibly trail, from your aperture, focal length, and sensor resolution — plus the number for aiming at the galactic core, where stars drift slower. The old 500 rule is shown crossed out; on a modern sensor it trails.
Planning a Milky Way night? Night Sky gives you the window
(section 9); the Stars tab gives you the shutter speed to use inside it.
Lens Tools — the DoF tab; Hyperfocal, Pano, and Stars share the same lens settings
Where to go next
AlignmentsThe moon-kissing-the-summit searches — Align, Event, Scout, and the Horizon Profile Alignment Window — have their own guide: Settings → Learn → Alignment Quick Start.
PlansEverything you save lands in the Plans tab. Each plan restores its pins, date, and time with one tap of View on Map.
Field manualSettings → Learn → How to Use GoldenLight — shorter feature cards, including the tools not covered here (Compass, Exposure, AR Viewfinder).
