How the Angel Stadium seat and sun data is measured

Every number comes from a USGS lidar survey of the ballpark, NOAA solar equations, the official outfield distances and published row lists. Nothing is estimated from photos.

Sources

Ballpark shape: USGS 3D Elevation Program lidar: California Gaps 2023 collection (flown 10 November 2023) for the west side, with the 2018 SoCal Wildfires collection (flown 12 August 2018) filling the east side. First-return points gridded to 1 m, noise removed.
Home plate: placed so the measured outfield wall matches the outfield distances in the scan; the fit is within about 32 m.
Section order and direction from home plate: a public ticket map of the ballpark (section and row centre points only). It is not drawn to scale, so it gives each section's direction; distances and heights come from the lidar.
Row lists and covered rows: rateyourseats.com.
Gates, bags, food and policies: the Angel Stadium A-Z guide.
Sun: NOAA solar position equations. Weather: ERA5 reanalysis via Open-Meteo.

How shade is computed

Each section is sampled on 3 lines at every row, 7791 seat points in total. For each point the ballpark surface is scanned in every direction the sun can come from, including the upper deck and its roof. A seat is in direct sun when the sun is higher than that horizon. Games are sampled every 10 minutes for 2 hours 50 minutes, on the 15th of each month from April to September, at 1:07 pm, 6:38 pm.

How rows are placed

A line is walked out from home plate through each section and the measured rake is split into decks by height jumps. Rows are spread over the visible slope in front of the published cover row. Premium boxes at the front of the lower bowl use the row positions from the ticket map, with heights from the lidar.

Limits

The 2023 scan covers the west half of the ballpark; the east side (right field and the first base end of the upper decks) comes from the 2018 scan. The bowl did not change between them; the two scans were matched on the field (0.37 m height offset).
Terrace sections 201 to 233 sit fully under the Club Level overhang, so the aircraft scan cannot see their rows. They are listed as fully covered (rateyourseats) and are not drawn.
Sections 216 to 218, 256, 321, 322, 330 and 331 did not give a clean rake in the scan and are not modelled.
Suites, the Diamond Club lounge and standing-room areas are not modelled as seats.
Section directions come from a ticket map that is not to scale; a few corner sections may be a row or two off along the stand.
Field Level (100s) sections have no 3D seat view: the lower bowl rises so gently that the 1 m lidar surface can't separate the rows in front of you from the field.

Downloads (CC BY 4.0)

sun-by-section.csv: month, start time, section, minutes of sun, shade arrival
sections.json: section geometry and row-by-row sightlines