Historically, certain directions have special significance and may be considered auspicious, even sacred. For thousands of years these directions, which include north, south, east, and west - the cardinal directions, the directions in which the sun rises and sets on the summer and winter solstices, and the directions of extreme motion of the moon (lunar standstills), have influenced the design and alignment of churches, mosques, temples, cities, and other places of importance throughout the world.

Sacred Directions is a Mac OS archaeoastronomy app that displays these directions on a satellite image at practically any location on Earth for the purpose of understanding sites in terms of their relation to the heavens. Sacred Directions AR is an iOS app that displays these same directions in augmented reality (AR) views as seen through the device's camera.

Sacred Directions AR can be used anywhere as it does not require an Internet connection. Hold it up and rotate in a circle to find the cardinal directions, summer and winter solstice sunrise, and sunset directions, the summer, and winter major and minor lunar standstill moonrise and moonset directions. The time slider allows you to view these directions now or anytime within the past 170,000 years.

New in this version

Bug fixes. Updated timeline for ancient poles. See beforeAtlantis.com for more information.