DEV Community

gpszxtzys
gpszxtzys

Posted on

I Built a Free Golden Hour API (and a 3D Globe of Earth's Best Light)

#showdev #api #webdev #unsplash

Draft: dev.to promotional article for Golden Hour by SendaFun

Title candidates

  1. I Built a Free Golden Hour API (and a 3D Globe of Earth's Best Light)
  2. Tracking the World's Most Beautiful Light: A Free API + 160 City Sunset Guides
  3. I Made a Free API That Tells You When Sunsets Will Actually Be Beautiful

Tags

showdev, api, webdev, photography

Body

Every evening, millions of people glance at the sky and wonder: is tonight going to be a good one? Photographers plan entire trips around the answer. I built a tool that actually computes it — and it's free, keyless, and open for anyone to use.

Meet Golden Hour by SendaFun → https://golden.sendafun.com/


A web app that tracks golden hour, blue hour and sunset quality for 160 cities worldwide:

  • A live 3D Earth with the real day/night terminator, so you can watch the world's "now" as a sheet of light.

- Per-city pages with sunrise/sunset, golden hour windows in local time, moon phases, a sun-path chart, and a 5-factor sunset quality score (cloud cover, visibility, weather, wind, humidity) — refreshed hourly, no API key needed.

  • 60+ long-form photography guides, a weekly "Light Report", city-vs-city comparisons, and 160 free wallpapers.
  • A free public API for developers: GET /api/light?lat=48.8566&lng=2.3522 returns sunrise/sunset, golden/blue hour windows, moon data and a 0–100 sunset quality score, CORS-enabled, no key.

Example API response (Paris, today):

{
  "sunrise": "2026-09-07T05:16:49.904Z",
  "sunset": "2026-09-07T17:35:00.000Z",
  "goldenHour": {
    "evening": { "start": "2026-09-07T16:35:00.000Z", "end": "2026-09-07T18:05:00.000Z" }
  },
  "weather": { "score": 30, "stars": 2, "source": "open-meteo", "estimated": false }
}
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode


Why I built it: the existing tools are either 2D calculators with no soul, or paid apps with a steep learning curve. I wanted the "when and where is the light most beautiful" question answered with real data, presented like a cinema poster instead of a spreadsheet.

It's early days, so constructive feedback is very welcome. If you photograph, travel, or build tools around light, I'd love to know what you'd add.

Try it → https://golden.sendafun.com/

Screenshots to attach

  1. Home 3D globe view
  2. City page (Tokyo) with sunset quality + sun path
  3. API docs page

Top comments (0)