How the Busch 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: St. Louis 2017 collection. 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 3 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 Busch 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, 6873 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 1:15 pm, 6:45 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 lidar was flown in 2017. Busch Stadium's field dimensions and seating layout as published today match that period, but any small seating change since 2017 is not in the model.
Sections 127, 130, 131, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 189, 191, 229, 272, 371 and 372 did not give a clean rake in the scan (mostly the outfield corners, where the stands meet the bullpens and the left field landing) and are not modelled.
Suites, the Champions Club, the Dugout Boxes, the field boxes, the 700 Level boxes, the rooftop and deck areas and standing room are not modelled as seats.
Covered rows come from rateyourseats. The aircraft scan sees the roof, not the seats under it.
The Cardinals dugout side is from the stadium map fit (sections tagged near the Cardinals dugout land on the first base side); the Cardinals do not publish it on their ballpark pages.

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