How the Yankee Stadium seat and sun data is measured

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

Sources

Ballpark shape: New York City topographic lidar collected in May 2017 for the City of New York (NOAA Digital Coast dataset 9306). 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 5 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 Yankee 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, 7140 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 1:05 pm, 7:05 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 on 4 and 16 May 2017, after the 2016-17 off-season work that removed about 2,100 seats (the obstructed bleacher seats and some Terrace seats) and added the outfield terraces (MLB.com). We found no section added, removed or renumbered since; the 2026 video board upgrade did not change seats.
Sections 103 and 105 to 108 (right field Field Level, under the bleachers), 132 and 136, 201 and 239 (bleacher ends), 205 and 238, plus 13 (front row on the field edge) and 104 (drawn over the bleachers) did not give a clean rake in the scan and are not modelled. Their rows are still listed.
The Yankees dugout side comes from rateyourseats.com (Sections 15A to 17A are tagged 'Near Yankees Dugout') and our map fit puts those sections on the first base side.
Suites, the Audi Yankees Club, the Pepsi Lounge, the terraces and standing room are not modelled as seats.
Covered rows come from rateyourseats.com: the aircraft scan sees the roof, not the seats under it.
Section directions come from a ticket map that is not to scale, so a few sections may be a row or two off along the stand.

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