A genuine sundial or astrolabe at your home

Shadows is a program used to design sundials and astrolabes. It can be used by everybody without any required technical skills. Shadows will calculate everything and print the drawing according the user's preferences.

Key points of Shadows

  • Free of charge in its entry level
  • Two advanced levels: Shadows Expert and Shadows Pro
  • Acclaimed as the simplest software for the design of sundials and astrolabes
  • Calculates and prints the drawings at real scale
  • Simulates, displays and animates the shadow of the style
  • Interactive astrolabe (rotation of the Rete and Alidade using the mouse)
  • Exports drawings as BMP, JPG, EMF and DXF (AutoCAD)
  • Offers complete ephemeris of the Sun and draws the Solar Diagram
  • Supports plane sundials with polar style of any orientation and reclination, analemmatic sundials, cylindrical and bifilar sundials.
  • Support planispheric astrolabes (front and back)
  • Includes a location database of more than 2500 locations with latitude, longitude and time zone
  • Provided with a full on-line help
  • Available in 12 languages
  • Designed for Windows XP and Windows Vista

Features... Free download... Order a license...



         



Shadows is acclaimed by thousands of users around the world and by numbers of professional sundial makers and astronomers.
Shadows has been awarded by the French Astronomical Society (Société Astronomique de France).

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Sundials made by Shadows users

Users of the Shadows software create wonderful sundials: engraved on stone or wood, or painted, made of metal or fabrics, installed on a wall or on top of a column, furnished with nice decorations, labelled with a philophical mottoe...
 Discover their sundials...

Try Shadows!
Download freely the software and try it without time limit. You will be able to upgrade to higher versions by buying a Shadows Expert or Shadows Pro license.

 Download Shadows freely...
 Discover Shadows Expert and Shadows Pro...
 Read what Users say...
 Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)...
 Read the on-line help of the software...


Creation and animation of a planispheric astrolabe of great accuracy.

Creation of a meridian dial slightly declining.

Graph of Equation of Time, scaled in minutes versus Sun's declination.

Solar Graph of the Sun's visibility during the year with horizon mask displayed.


Rosace des directions

Universal astrolabe (Saphae Arzachelis) with its ruler and brachiolus that can be moved with the mouse.

Animation of the shadow on a Direct West sundial of the southern hemisphere.

Direction rose showing the azimuth and distance of selected locations.

Complete on-line help with detailled explanations on the software and on sundial science.



 More about sundials: www.cadrans-solaires.org
 View the list of Shadows features
 Download Shadows

 View sundials made by Shadows' users
 Read the Shadows' users testimonies
 Contact the author of Shadows.