How SunsetMap Calculates Great Sunset Spots

SunsetMap isn't a crowdsourced list with pins dropped by guesswork. Underneath the community layer is a terrain analysis pipeline that's already chewed through billions of elevation points to work out where the western horizon actually opens up.

The short version

1. Start with elevation data. SunsetMap uses the Copernicus Digital Elevation Model — a free, global dataset built from satellite radar.
2. Calculate horizon visibility. For a given point, the terrain around it is checked for anything — hills, ridges, high ground — that would block the western sky.
3. Factor in elevation advantage. Higher ground generally clears more obstructions and opens up a wider view.
4. Layer on community ratings. Terrain tells you where a view is physically possible; people who've actually stood there tell you if it's worth the trip.

What "mapping a continent" actually takes

When SunsetMap finished mapping Europe, that meant analysing over 2.5 billion terrain points across roughly 6 million km² — a single processing run that took more than 30 hours, after several rounds of rewriting the pipeline just to get it to scale. The maths behind working out one horizon is straightforward; doing it across an entire continent, without running out of memory or disk, is a genuinely different engineering problem.

With Europe complete, SunsetMap covers roughly a fifth of the world's landmass — and more regions are being added continuously.

What's next

• Weather and cloud-cover integration, for real sunset-quality predictions.
• Air quality data as an additional signal.
• Continued global coverage, region by region.
• Seasonal sun-position adjustments as the pipeline matures.

None of this replaces the community side of SunsetMap — if anything, better terrain data just means the pins people add get more useful context around them. Curious what a good spot actually looks like once the terrain checks out? Read how to find the best places to watch sunset.

Frequently asked questions