The volcanoes of Puebla
Sun in the crater
The day you see it from your street, to the minute
A few days a year, the sun sets right into the crater of Popocatépetl. Every street in Puebla has its own days. Here are yours, to the minute.
Working out today's line…
A phone's compass can be off by 10 to 20°: use it to know which way to look.
Drag sideways to line up the gold line with the mountain.
Your phone will ask for permission to use the compass and the camera. Nothing leaves it.
Your dates
Where will you watch from?
Use your location, find your neighborhood or tap the map. Everything is worked out on your phone; only your area, to within a kilometer, goes out for the clouds, plus any address you search on the map.
Well-known places
Near Tagers
Open viewpoints near each Tagers branch.
From
Viewpoints
Where should I stand?
Hills, parks and public viewpoints with an open view of the volcano, worked out on the terrain.
Today
Finding today's viewpoint…
The map
Which day does it cross your street?
Each day the meeting is seen from one line, and from each point on it at a different minute. Move the date or tap “Play the year”; tap the map to get dates from there.
the sun meets the summitthe moon meets the summitopen viewpointsyour dates
The sun's lines repeat every year, a day apart at most. · Terrain: Copernicus DEM GLO-30.
Coming up
Which dates should you save?
Working out the next full moon on the volcanoes…
If you're coming to Puebla
Every evening except from November 28 to January 13, there's a spot in the metro area where the sun sets on the summit of Popo or Izta. The map shows where each day's line runs.
The other full moons on the volcanoes
- Working out the next two months…
How we work it out
How exact is it?
- The summit
- We measure each volcano with the Copernicus terrain model (one point every 30 meters) and work out how high its summit looks from where you are, with the curvature of the Earth and the way the air bends light.
- The sun and the moon
- Their positions come from Astronomy Engine; we checked them against NASA's DE421 ephemerides and they agree to within a thousandth of a degree.
- Precision
- The day is exact and the time is right to the minute, with a clear sky.
- The map
- While you sweep through the year, the sun's lines are the ones already worked out for 2027; from one year to the next they shift by a day at most. When you let go, the day you pick is calculated exactly.
- The view
- Nearby buildings and trees can block it: find a rooftop, a hill or an open spot.
- Clear view
- At each viewpoint we check the terrain toward the summit from eye height, with a satellite model of the surface made between 2011 and 2015 (Copernicus, 30 m cells) and a map of what covers the ground (ESA WorldCover 2021). “Clear view” means the whole disc of the sun clears everything in the way. On a hill or in an open park it's reliable; on a city street corner it isn't, because the model averages houses and trees, and a new building can block the view.
Sources: Astronomy Engine · Copernicus DEM GLO-30 (© DLR e.V. 2010-2014 and © Airbus Defence and Space GmbH 2014-2018, provided under COPERNICUS by the European Union and ESA) · Neighborhoods and towns: DENUE, INEGI · Map: OpenFreeMap, © OpenMapTiles, data © OpenStreetMap · Clouds: MET Norway (CC BY 4.0) · Viewpoints: © OpenStreetMap (ODbL) · Land cover: ESA WorldCover 2021 (CC BY 4.0). The stars come from the Yale Bright Star Catalogue, 5th edition (Hoffleit and Warren, 1991; public domain, via CDS Strasbourg), down to magnitude 4.5; the planets, from Astronomy Engine.
For afterwards
Breakfast from 8:00 a.m. after a sunrise; coffee or dinner after a sunset. At Tagers 5 Sur, Zavaleta, Sonata and Paseo Angelópolis.
See the menu