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This website is a platform where you can find zemanim (times) and various other daily information according to Rabbi Ovadia Yosef ZT"L and his sons for anywhere in the world.

It all started in Israel in the year 1990. Rabbi Ovadia Yosef ZT"L saw that the sephardim were not following calendars that were properly adhering to the halachot and minhagim of their poskim. The people were using calendars (like Rabbi Tukachinsky's calendar) that followed Ashkenazic rulings with most of their times based entirely on degrees or other opinions.
Therefore, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef Z"TL started a project with the Ohr HaChaim yeshiva (which Rabbi Reuven Elbaz is the Rosh Yeshiva of), and together with Rabbi Shlomo Benizri and Rabbi Asher Darshan they sat down and created the "Luach HaMaor Ohr HaChaim" otherwise known as the Ohr HaChaim calendar.
Rabbi Shlomo Benizri was in charge of figuring out which halachot to ask Rabbi Ovadia about regarding the calendar, and Rabbi Asher Darshan was in charge of developing the physical calendar, and it's code.
After Rabbi Ovadia gave a haskama to the calendar itself, the Ohr HaChaim calendar has been considered the most authoritative publication of zemanim according to Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, and its use is widespread in Israel.
Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef Shlita is known to give many haskamot, and he has even given haskamot to calendars that have not properly followed his halachot entirely. However, whenever he mentions zemanim in his weekly shiurim, he always mentions how the Ohr HaChaim calendar is the most accurate one.

This website (and applications) can accurately recreate the Ohr HaChaim calendar, and it's underlying calculations for everywhere in Israel.

While in Israel, if a person wants to follow Rabbi Ovadia's halachot, there is the Ohr HaChaim calendar to follow. Rabbi Ovadia never made a calendar for outside of Israel. There could be many reasons why he didn't want to create one, however, he obviously had an opinion on zemanim outside of Israel as we can see from Rabbi David Yosef's story (Halacha Berurah Chelek 14 Kuntrus Ki Ba Hashemesh Page 213) about Rabbi Ovadia spending Tisha Be'Av in New York and telling the congregation that they may end the fast at the Geonic Nightfall.

This project was made for the following goals:
1.) To follow Rabbi Ovadia and his son's rulings inside of Israel AND outside of Israel.
2.) To give everyone access to the Ohr HaChaim calendar even if they didn't have the physical calendar.
3.) Having the Ohr HaChaim calendar's times on your phone was also a goal of this project
4.) To educate the people about sephardic zemanim.

The layout and notifications of the applications were inspired by Jay Gindin's Android application. His application lets you choose from a list of opinions for various zemanim, however, not every zeman was included in his application and there was a lot of information that could have been added, like the weekly parasha.

All of the zemanim, whether on the website or the applications, have explanations for how each zeman is calculated. Please refer to those dialogs to understand how a zeman is actually calculated.
However, when it comes to figuring out how to implement what the Ohr HaChaim calendar does in Israel. Thankfully, the Ohr HaChaim calendar explains how they calculate the zmanim in the introduction of their calendar. With what they wrote in the introduction, most of the zemanim could be replicated. It is important to note that when they write "Astronomical" Sunrise/Sunset, they mean to include elevation in their calculations. While some others use the word astronomical to mean sea level sunrise. According to Rabbi Benizri and Rabbi Darshan, Rabbi Ovadia told them to calculate all the zemanim with elevation included and that is what we do by default in Israel.

Now, when it comes to outside of Israel, we have been blessed with the opportunity to work with Rabbi Lior Dahan and Rabbi Meir Gavriel Elbaz. Rabbi Dahan is the author of the Amudeh Horaah series on the Mishna Berurah. He has been kind enough to share with us his "Amudeh Horaah" calendar that also follows Rabbi Ovadia Yosef Z"TL but is designed for outside of Israel.
The Amudeh Horaah calendar is slightly different from the Ohr HaChaim calendar. Rabbi Dahan added in two zemanim into his calendar. Those being "Pelag Hamincha" according to the Halacha Berurah and "Tzet HaCochavim L'Chumra" (Stringent Nightfall). He also changed the zeman for "Tallit/Tefilin" to be 60 zemaniyot minutes and not 66 as the 66 zeman was really only meant for people in great need.
In addition to those changes, the Amudeh Horaah calendar did not use elevation in it's zemanim calculations, and it adjusted any zeman that had to do with Alot Hashachar or Tzet HaCochavim (Dawn or Nightfall) according to the distance that the user is from the equator.

To explain the last point, it is known that there are two differing opinions on how to calculate a shaah zemanit (seasonal hour):
1.) The GR"A and many others write to divide the day into 12 starting from sunrise and ending at sunset.
2.) The Terumat Hadeshen, Magen Avraham, and others write to split the day into 12 starting from Alot HaShachar to Tzeit HaCochavim (Dawn to Nightfall).

Splitting the day into 12 hours according to the GR"A is simple, as anywhere you go you can figure out when sunrise/sunset is and you just need to split that into 12.
However, if you want to calculate a MG"A seasonal hour based on Alot to Tzet, many sephardic poskim say (See Minchat Kohen 2:4) that for outside of Israel there would need to be an adjustment based on the distance of the user from the equator because twilight is longer as you move away from the equator. The Halacha Berurah (Siman 261:13) writes this explicitly.
Although the Yalkut Yosef (Siman 293 Page 716 top left paragraph) seems to imply that the zemanim are the same everywhere in the world, and it even quotes the Yabia Omer as saying the same. The quoted Yabia Omer does not say that the zemanim do not need to be adjusted, rather it is talking about the 72 minutes of Rabbenu Tam being applicable to Israel as well. Seemingly, this Yalkut Yosef is incorrect as well, because our rabbanim have confirmed with Rav Yitzhak Yosef that there DOES need to be an adjustment to the zemanim outside of Israel.
Therefore, we do adjust the zemanim dealing with Alot HaShachar and Tzet HaCochavim according to the user's location outside of Israel.

In order to figure out how to adjust the zemanim based on the equator, we use the degree that the sun is at in Israel and by setting the date of the calculations to the Equinox where a day is a perfect 12 hours (i.e. there are 60 minutes every hour), we can figure out how much to adjust.
For example:
If we want to figure out when is nightfall according to the geonim (13.5 zemaniyot minutes), we would first go to Israel on the Equinox (around March 21st) and then find out what the degree the sun is at when 13.5 minutes have passed after sunset. In our testing, this has been around 3.7 degrees. Then we can take that degree count and go back to New York. On March 21st in New York, how many regular minutes need to pass until the sun reaches 3.7 degrees. In our testing, this has been around 16-17 minutes. Now that we know how much the zemanim have been adjusted, we can use that year round! So Nightfall of the geonim is at around 16-17 seasonal minutes after sunset in New York year round!
This adjustment is used even in places closer to the equator where it would be even less time needed to get to nightfall of the geonim because it is more accurate to the nature there. However, it will "knowingly" not be as scientifically accurate as using straight degrees like the Ashkenazim use. However, Sephardim still use seasonal minutes because that is what the Gemara and poskim have ruled to use.

Rabbi Asher Darshan (who was on the team for the Ohr HaChaim calendar in Israel) reported that Rabbi Ovadia Yosef ZT"L held that the actual sunrise/sunset that should be used for calculating zmanim is when sunrise/sunset is seen at the highest point in the city. Rabbi Dahan says that this makes sense as Sephardim would follow sunset based on what they could see. However, Rabbi David Yosef Shlita writes that many have told him that Rabbi Ovadia ZT"L held to use Mishor (Sea Level) sunrise/sunset and others have told him in his father's name that elevation should be included for sunrise/sunset (i.e. the highest point in the city). Rabbi David writes that maybe Rabbi Ovadia only meant to use elevation based sunrise/sunset in cases where it would lead a person to be stringent. Rabbi Lior Dahan says that it makes sense to use elevation in cities that are on hills and mountains, and to not use it when the city, E.G. New York, is close to sea level.

(See Halacha Berura vol. 14, in Otzrot Yosef (Kuntrus Ki Ba Hashemesh), Siman 6, Perek 21 for an in depth discussion)

We decided to enable elevation by default in Israel, as most users there are used to it being included in the calculations. However, for outside of Israel, even though we could get the user's elevation, we decided against using elevation as it is difficult to determine whether the user is on a hill or not just based on the user's elevation. For example, let's say a person is at the Grand Canyon. If he was standing at the top of the Grand Canyon, the elevation level would be over 2,100 meters! Whereas if he was located in the valley of the Grand Canyon, he would be only at an elevation level of 750 meters! This is all in a mile radius! Even though it is an extreme case, it illustrates the point that it is hard for an application to decide whether to use elevation.
In addition to this reason, many poskim (including Rabbi David Yosef) hold that zemanim should be calculated at sea level, so we can also rely on those poskim.
It should be noted that elevation's effect on zemanim gets significantly less impactful as the user gets higher and higher. The difference between 0 meters and 30 is whole minute, while the difference between 10,000 meters and 11,000 meters is less than 10 seconds.
The ability to add elevation into the calculations of the zemanim are always available if the user desires it to be turned on.

This could be due to numerous reasons:
1.) The print based calendars are not exactly pointing to your individual location. They are just set to a general area or a point near you. While our applications use your exact latitude and longitude provided. In general, in order to get accurate zemanim for your location, you should provide your latitude and longitude. A Zip Code is good enough in many cases, however, there are exceptions.
2.) The algorithm for sunrise and sunset is taken from the NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), whereas the Ohr HaChaim calendar (being closed sourced we can not actually tell) might be using another algorithm for sunrise/sunset. (The Amudeh Horaah uses NOAA)
3.) The algorithm for how much elevation should affect sunrise/sunset might be different as well.
4.) The user may be located near the bottom of the mountain and elevation might be lower than it should be.
5.) The calendars round up or round down the zemanim and they do not show the seconds. So it could be that we are rounding down while they are rounding up.

In the end of the day, having a difference of a minute or two to the zemanim is not a huge problem as zemanim are not supposed too accurate to the second.

No, that is incorrect. He held that Alot HaShachar occurs 72 "zemaniyot" (seasonal) minutes before sunrise.
(See Yalkut Yosef 1 Page 137 and Yechave Da'at 2 Siman 8)
Also see here

First, see the dialog for the sunrise zeman by clicking on it in the website/applications. By default, we use Mishor (Sea Level) sunrise as it is easy to calculate. Ideally, you should download the VISIBLE sunrise times from the chaitables.com website as that is what the Yalkut Yosef holds is the most accurate sunrise (Yalkut Yosef 5764 edition Tefila Aleph Page 48, Sheirit Yosef 2 Page 253).

See the dialog for the zeman for more information. But to put it simply:
There is a machloket as to when Pelag Ha'Minḥa is. Everyone says to use GR"A minutes to calculate it, however, the offset from sunset or tzet hacochavim is disputed. This causes a small 13.5 seasonal minute difference and even though the Ohr HaChaim calendar originally only showed the later time. The rabbanim have advised us that both zemanim are appropriate to rely on and to display both. However, if possible, it is preferable to delay arvit/accepting Shabbat until the later time has passed.

See the dialog for the zeman of Rabbenu Tam for more info. However, simply put, even though Rabbi Ovadia himself always kept the seasonal time of Rabbenu Tam. The Yalkut Yosef and Halacha Berurah both hold that in northern places in the world (like Europe and France), if Rabbenu Tam will take too long to pass, you need not be strict for the seasonal time of Rabbenu Tam. This is especially true if you adjust Rabbenu Tam based on the distance from the equator as Rabbenu Tam may go all the way until 1 AM the next day.
Therefore, even though inside of Israel we always use the seasonal time of Rabbenu Tam. For outside of Israel, we limit it to 72 regular minutes.
(See Yalkut Yosef Siman 293:6 and Halacha Berurah 15 Page 42)

First of all, it should be pointed out that we do not write to say tachanun on these days or not, we just inform the user that some people skip tachanun on these days and some do not.
Now to address the question itself:
Even though Rabbi Ovadia writes to skip tachanun on these days, it is not so simple to say that tachanun should always be skipped on those days everywhere.
As Rabbi Dahan explains: "Israel is intensely charged. People take it extremely personal because it is to so many". It would be difficult to tell these people that nothing special happened on these days and that tachanun should be said like a regular day.
Although, Rabbi Yonatan Nacson writes that we can rely on Rabbi Ovadia's writings to not say tachanun on these days, other rabbanim are not so accepting of that fact because Israel was "intensely charged".
Rabbi Meir Gavriel Elbaz says that the custom of the Yeshiva/Kollel "Chazon Ovadia" was to follow what Rabbi Ovadia did in his personal shul and skip tachanun only on Yom Yerushalayim (not for mincha the day before).

Inside the website and applications, we simply write, "Some say tachanun" or "Some skip tachanun by mincha" to avoid the debate entirely as this is not something an application can decide for you.

As of now, there is no way to donate as this project was all done L'Shem Shamayim using free services. However, if deemed necessary to expand the project using paid services, donations may become possible.

Please reach out to [email protected]