Now on the App Store
See the shot
before you go.
Find the night the moon comes up behind your lighthouse, and where to stand. Then check whether the sky will be worth the drive — scored at your exact pin, five days out.
Mt Hood from Canby, 6 Oct 2025 — the moon on the summit, 50 miles off. Photograph by Andy.
It’s 4am. An hour of dark road to the spot, and nobody can tell you if the sky will do anything when you get there.
Drive, or stay in bed?
Every planning app tells you when the sun rises. GoldenLight tells you whether it’s worth being there — at any pin, anywhere. For a sunrise or a sunset, the aurora, or the one night the moon comes up behind your mountain.
The Lumen Score
It scored 89 the night before. This was the morning.
Sunrise and sunset, scored 0 to 100 at your exact pin, five days out, for every spot you keep — ranked, so tomorrow’s best bet is on top.
Color comes from under the weather, so GoldenLight doesn’t just look up. It looks out along the path the light travels to the far horizon, and asks whether that light gets through.
And it says plainly when the sky will be a dud. Same lake, same day: sunrise 89, sunset 8. That honesty is the point.
Tested by photographers through summer 2026 — their field reports and rated skies recalibrated the score. In the app it’s the Color Score.
The morning
The forecast
Alignment
Find the day the moon lands on your peak.
Pick a subject — a summit, a lighthouse, a lone tree — and GoldenLight works out when the sun or moon lines up behind it, and exactly where to stand. Alignments are geometry, not a forecast.
Align
Every alignment on your subject, a year out.
Event
One moonrise, and the whole line of ground it works from.
Scout
Name the subject. Get ranked ground to stand on.
“Mt Hood, 50 miles off, the moon on the summit, 6 Oct 2025, from my own house in Canby. I knew that one was coming.”
— Andy · the photograph at the top of this page
Mt Hood · moonrise · 6 Oct 2025
Horizon Profile
See the shot before you drive to it.
The real ridgeline from your exact spot, with the sun, moon and Milky Way in true position, framed at your focal length. Scrub the clock and watch the moon slide behind the tower.
- +0.9°altitude
- 225.1°azimuth
- 489mmfocal length
- 4°field of view
It runs from terrain kept on your phone, so it works on the ridge with no signal.
The photograph
The plan
Goat’s Eye
Stand there before you stand there.
Goat’s Eye lifts you off the ground and orbits your spot in 3D, looking back across the terrain — so you know what the rim, the ridge or the valley will give you before you hike in.
Like Horizon Profile, it works from the terrain on your phone. No signal needed.
The photograph
Goat’s Eye
Aurora
Odds for where you actually are.
Not one global number — aurora odds for your own latitude, from live solar wind. When the odds climb, GoldenLight says go now.
Then it says the most honest thing an app can say: the app’s read — trust your eyes over it.
The photograph
Go now
Everything, one screen
The whole sky, not just the forecast.
Color score, weather, fog, storms, the Milky Way window, aurora, smoke, waves and sea sparkle — one glance, wherever you are.
See the 21% up top? It will also tell you to stay in bed.
The photograph
Home
And the rest of the kit
The apps on the kitchen table, in one.
The things a landscape photographer reaches for to plan a shoot — in plain language, talking to each other.
Map Scout
Sun, moon and Milky Way lines from your pin. A week of forecast cloud drifting across the map, a color-score heatmap, light pollution, public land, live US fire perimeters, and a cone showing what your lens will frame.
Pin Alerts
Pick your spots and GoldenLight tells you when one is forecast to score — sunset hours ahead, sunrise the night before.
The night sky
Golden hour, blue hour and astro dark. The Milky Way window, and how much moon drowns it.
AR viewfinder
The sun, moon and Milky Way laid over your live camera, so you can frame it standing right there.
The coast
Tides, waves and sea sparkle — bioluminescence — for the mornings the ocean is the subject.
Lens tools
Depth of field, hyperfocal, panorama, the longest shutter before stars trail, and reciprocity for 13 film stocks.
Anywhere
Any pin on Earth.
The score, alignments, ridgelines and astronomy work wherever you drop a pin — not just where I live.
Off the grid
No signal on the ridge? Fine.
Horizon Profile, Goat’s Eye and the AR viewfinder run from terrain kept on your phone.
Straight with you
It tells you what it can’t see.
Fire and tides are US-only, waves and sea sparkle need a coast, and the live satellite card covers Oregon and Washington. Each one says so, instead of showing you nothing.
A note from Andy
Why I built GoldenLight
I have been a long time building this. Countless nights and weekends, and more months than I want to count. I owe the people close to me everything for making it possible, and for putting up with me while I did.
I started GoldenLight because I was tired of the way planning a shoot worked. A half a dozen apps open on the kitchen table, each one convoluted in its own way, just to answer one question: is it worth going out? For a sunrise or a sunset. For the aurora. For a king tide, or the one night the moon comes up behind the mountain.
So I started on my little idea. What began as an impossible feat is, honestly, a real thing now. I have been field testing it for months at the places I actually shoot. Mt Hood with the moon on the summit, from Canby.
I built it so it can keep evolving and with new features constantly being added. It is a forecast, not a promise. But it is the forecast I wished I had.
Nothing you save leaves your phone. No account, no tracking.
GoldenLight is an app built by a photographer, for photographers.
— Andy
Andrew Sambuceto · landscape photographer · Canby, Oregon
Plans
Start with a free month.
Free to download. Every plan unlocks all of GoldenLight.
Yearly
Your first month is free.
About $2.08 a month after that.
Start the free monthUS prices; in other countries, see the App Store. Only the yearly plan opens with the free month. Subscriptions renew until you cancel them in your Apple Account settings.
Privacy
Your spots are yours.
Coordinates go out so forecasts can answer — nothing linked to you. Read the privacy policy
It stays on your phone.
What you save stays on the device — your pins, your plans, your spots.
No account.
Nothing to sign up for, no profile to fill in.
No tracking.
No ads, no analytics. Just the sky.
GoldenLight · Photo Planner
Only drive when it’s worth it.
Score the light, find the alignment, see the ridgeline — then decide whether to set the alarm.
Built and photographed by Andrew Sambuceto, Canby, Oregon. Every photograph on this page is Andy’s; every screen is the real app.
GoldenLight is a forecast, not a promise. Apple and App Store are trademarks of Apple Inc.