GoldenLight · Quick Start

Alignment Searches

An alignment is the moment the sun, moon, or Milky Way core lines up with a landmark — the moon kissing a summit, the sun rising behind a lighthouse. GoldenLight has three searches in Map Scout and an Alignment Window in Horizon Profile to find those moments. This guide shows you which one to reach for, and how each works.

First, the pins

Every search is built from a couple of pins on the map.

Camera Pin
Where you stand
Subject Pin
What you're shooting
A Night's Line
Where to stand that night
The Marker
The spot the slider is on
Placing pins: tap a pin button on the right side of the map, then pan the map so the crosshairs sit exactly where you want, and tap the red Place button. Your finger never covers the target.

Which search do I use?

Match what you already know to the question. All three live on the Subject pin's card: place a Subject pin on what you're shooting, tap the gold pin, and the card's last three rows ask them — same + icon, different color.

The Subject pin's card — tap the gold pin to see it
⊕
“I know where I'll stand and what I'm shooting.”
When does something line up from this exact spot?
Align
⊕
“I know the date and the subject.”
Where do I stand for that day's rise or set?
Event
⊕
“I only know the subject.”
Find me the best camera spots, any date this year.
Scout
⊕
Align — from where you stand
Sweeps the next 365 days from your camera spot
Use when: you've found your composition — camera spot and subject both chosen — and want to know every date the sun, moon, or Milky Way lines up behind the subject.
  1. Place a Camera pin where you'll stand and a Subject pin on your landmark.
  2. Tap the gold Subject pin, then From my spot · ALIGN on its card.
  3. Horizon Profile opens on the real terrain, aimed at your subject, with a box already on it. Drag the box's edges to frame where you want the body to be — above the subject, or behind it.
  4. Tap Edit to choose the body — Sun, Moon, or Milky Way — rise or set, and the dates. Then tap Find.
  5. The dates that line up appear along the bottom, and each one's path is drawn across the view. Each has a rating — Perfect · Great · Good — by how close the body comes to your subject's line while it is in your box.
  6. Tap a date to jump to that moment and see the shot. Tap its bookmark to Save as Plan.
You get: every date that lines up in the range you chose, shown on the real terrain from the exact spot you'll set up your tripod.
⊕
Event — pick the date, find the spot
One date, one rise or set — a line of places to stand
Use when: a specific date matters — a full moon rising behind Mt. Hood next Tuesday — and you need to know where in the valley to stand.
  1. Place a Subject pin on the landmark.
  2. Tap the gold Subject pin, then On a date · EVENT on its card. Pick the date, the body (sun or moon), and rise or set.
  3. Optionally choose where it sits on the top — five pictures, from only the rim showing above it to the whole disk sitting on it.
  4. Tap Find Spots for This Date.
  5. That night's line appears on the map, inside a white band. Every point along it is a place to stand — closer in, the body sits higher and the subject looks larger. The line is gold where you can see the subject's top, thin white where only a sliver of it shows, and dashed where the ground in front hides it; it glows where the light is best.
  6. Drag the slider — Moon large far out, Subject large close in — to move the marker along the line; it shows the time, the distance, the lens and how big the subject looks. A red camera on the slider marks your own camera pin. Tap This spot, or anywhere inside the band, for that spot's card: its own exact time and rating, with Horizon Profile, Directions, Save Pin, Watch and Save as Plan.
  7. If one of your own pins lines up that night it gets a gold ring and its time; a pin that is close gets a dashed line showing how far and which way. The nights either side are drawn dashed with their date, and the ‹ › arrows move a day.
You get: a line on the map — pick your standoff distance, drive there on the date, and the body meets your subject on schedule.
⊕
Scout — start from the subject
Every night it lines up, then where to stand
Use when: you love a subject but have no spot and no date. Scout finds every night it lines up within your radius, and draws where to stand on each.
  1. Place a Subject pin on the landmark, tap it, then Any night · SCOUT on its card.
  2. In the sheet, pick the body — Moon, Sun, or Milky Way — Rising or Setting (and Full moon only), where it sits on the top, how far you'll go — 15, 30, 60, or 100 miles — and the day the year starts from.
  3. Tap Find the nights. The app works through a year, night by night, on the real terrain.
  4. The nights appear as cards along the bottom — Best first, or Soonest — each with its date and time, a rating, the moon's phase and how far out to stand. List shows them all. A night that works from one of your saved pins says so in gold, and My pins puts those nights first.
  5. Tap a night: its line is drawn on the map — gold where you can see the subject's top, thin white where only a sliver shows, dashed where it is hidden — with the other nights' lines faint behind it.
  6. Sweep the nights: drag the strip under the cards to run through every night's line in turn, in the order they leave the subject — gold ticks are the best light, a ring marks a night one of your pins works on — or tap any faint line on the map to pick that night. The caption names a town the line passes.
  7. Drag the slider — Moon large far out, Subject large close in — and tap This spot for the card: that spot's exact time and rating, the lens, Directions, Horizon Profile, Save as Plan or Watch.
You get: every night of the year the shot exists, and the line of places to stand on each — including the 50-mile telephoto compression spots.

Alignment in Horizon Profile

Horizon Profile is the 3D view — real terrain rendered from your camera pin, with the live sun, moon, and Milky Way. Open it with the mountain button on the right side of Map Scout.

Horizon Profile button
The Alignment Window
Draw a box in the sky — find everything that passes through it
Use when: you're framing visually — “I want the moon in this notch between the peaks” — rather than aligning to a single pinned subject.
  1. Open Horizon Profile and pan the view to your composition. Pinch to match your lens' field of view.
  2. Tap Alignment Window — a frame appears in the sky. Drag inside it to move it; drag the handle on any edge to move that edge. It stays glued to that patch of sky as you pan.
  3. Pick a date range and body, then tap the magnifying glass.
  4. Tap View N results: every pass of the sun, moon, or Milky Way core through your frame. With a Subject pin on the map, each pass is rated by how close it comes to the subject's line; one that stays well off it says In your box. Tap a pass and the whole 3D scene scrubs to that moment so you can see it.
  5. Tap the gold Save on any pass to keep it as a plan.
Two more tricks: the − / + buttons beside the time nudge it 15 seconds at a time for landing the moon exactly on a summit — and the bookmark button in the top bar instantly saves whatever moment you're looking at as a plan.

Good to know

Searches start from the scrubber date. Scrub the timeline to October first, and Align / Scout sweep the year starting from October.
Everything lands in Plans. A saved alignment is named for what it is — “Moonrise behind Mt. Hood from Canby” — in the Plans tab, and each restores its pins, date, and time with View on Map.
Watch keeps every date. Tap Watch on a spot's card, or in Align mode, to keep it as a Lookout: every date it lines up in the next year is listed in Calendar → Alignments, with the cloud forecast once a date is a week away. Save a date as a plan and turn on Remind me for a notification before you go.
Saved pins work too. Tap any saved pin and choose Use as Camera or Use as Subject to feed it into a search without re-placing it.
Clearing results: the × on the results panel clears the line but keeps your pins. Removing the subject pin clears everything.

What it looks like when it works

The Plan
Horizon Profile showing the moon meeting the ridge saddle at 5:50 AM, framed at 292mm
The Photograph
The full moon setting into the snowy saddle between two summits at dawn
Planned in Horizon Profile, shot at dawn: the moon settling into the saddle at 5:50 AM, right where the render put it.
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