There’s been some debate over which Maine spot gets the first glimpse of the sunrise in the continental United States.
Three places in Maine — Cadillac Mountain, Lubec and Mars Hill — have each been touted as the best vantage point for the first rays of the morning sun.
Regardless of your allegiance, Maine is definitely the place to be to catch the sunrise.
But what if you took all the photos people have taken of sunrises and sunsets and put them on a map?
NYU grad student Michelle Chandra’s interactive data project built such a visualization of the sun’s rising and setting using the Instagram hashtags #sunrise and #sunset.
It shows where people in the last 24 hours are uploading these photos, and it’s updated in real-time, she said.
The relative size of each point on the map depicts how soon users upload the photos after each rising or setting. Some of the photos have a lag.
“While Instagram users upload photos of the sunset within 4 hours of the sun setting, many Instagram users wait until the end of the day to [reminisce] about the sunrise,” she wrote.
