Best Apps for Planning Moon Photography

PhotoPills remains the most complete phone toolkit, with AR and exposure and depth-of-field calculators, but its terrain check is a manual one-point pin. For a line-up search that also uses real elevation data, look at The Photographer's Ephemeris web app on its top tier and PlanIt. PeakFinder draws the moon's path on a real skyline but has no date search. Heliora is the free, browser-based option: it searches 18 months ahead for full-moon line-ups behind a summit you pick and drops the nights the terrain would hide.

Heliora wrote this page and is one of the tools on it. Its own limitations are listed below with the same care as everyone else's.

• When does the moon line up? A forward search: give the tool your position and a subject, and it returns the dates and minutes the moon sits behind it. Without this you scroll through calendars one night at a time.
• Will the terrain let you see it? A moon that "rises" at 0° is still behind the ridge for many minutes if the horizon in that direction sits at 3°. A tool either models the terrain from elevation data, lets you check one obstacle by hand, or ignores it.

Drop a pin where you will stand, then pick a named summit from the list or place a target. Heliora ray-casts the terrain horizon around you from elevation data, then scans the next 18 months for the minutes the full moon crosses the bearing of that summit near its height. Crossings the terrain would hide, or that happen in daylight, are dropped rather than shown with a warning. The same search works for the sun (next 12 months) and for naked-eye planets (next 60 nights).

What it does not do

• No offline mode, no AR camera view, no exposure or depth-of-field calculators.
• Terrain is sampled at roughly 110 m, so a small summit block or a building can be missed; results are typically good to a few minutes, and a nearby small target needs extra care. Details on the method page.
• No free-text "when is the moon at this azimuth" search: the target is a place on the map.

What is the best app for planning a full moon behind a mountain?

It depends on what you will pay and where you plan. PhotoPills has a forward Find search and AR, but checks terrain only against one point you mark. The Photographer's Ephemeris web app (MAX tier) and PlanIt combine a line-up search with elevation data. PeakFinder shows the moon path on a real skyline without a date search. Heliora is free in a browser: it searches 18 months ahead for full-moon line-ups behind a summit you pick and drops nights the terrain would hide.

Is there a free moon photography planner?

Yes. Heliora is free with no account and runs in any browser. MoonCalc is a free web calculator without terrain. The Photographer's Ephemeris web app and PlanIt Earth have free tiers, with their terrain and alignment features concentrated in paid tiers. Ephemeris (Vito) and LightPlan have free versions with paid upgrades.

Does PhotoPills account for terrain when the moon rises?

Only by hand. PhotoPills lets you place an obstacle pin and reports the elevation angle to that one point; the moon line turns dashed when the obstacle hides it. It does not model the whole horizon from elevation data. You can also enter your height above the horizon manually.

Why does the moon rise later than the app says?

Published moonrise times assume a flat horizon at 0°. If hills or mountains raise the horizon in that direction to 2 or 3°, the moon clears them several minutes to tens of minutes later, depending on its angle of climb. Tools that model terrain from elevation data (Heliora, PeakFinder, PlanIt, TPE on its top tier) correct for this.

Every claim about another product was read from that product's own website or app store listing on 27 September 2026, not from memory. Features are listed as each vendor describes them; we have not tested every app. Prices are US store prices and vary by region. If something here is wrong or out of date, tell us and it will be corrected.

• PhotoPills on the App Store
• PhotoPills user guide (archived 3 Sep 2026)
• TPE Web 4.0 launch notes
• TPE Web subscriptions
• TPE for iOS
• PlanIt Earth on Google Play
• PlanIt Pro on the App Store
• Sun Surveyor on the App Store
• PeakFinder on the App Store
• PeakFinder manual
• Ephemeris on the App Store
• LightPlan
• MoonCalc