Sunrise & Sunset Calculator
Sunrise, sunset, day length, solar noon, twilight and golden hour for any city or coordinates on any date, with the sun’s height through the day and day length through the year.
How to Use
- Type a city, or press My location to use where you are (your browser asks first), or enter a latitude and longitude.
- Pick a date. Times are shown in the place’s own time zone, including daylight saving.
- Read sunrise, sunset, day length and solar noon, and the full list of twilight and golden hour times.
- The chart traces the sun’s height above the horizon through the day, shaded for night, twilight, golden hour and daylight; the strip below it shows day length through the whole year.
Worked Example
London (51.51° N, 0.13° W) on Saturday 3 October 2026. The sun’s declination that day is −4.07°, just south of the equator, and the equation of time is +10.97 minutes, meaning the sun runs ahead of clock time.
Solar noon in UTC = 12:00 − 4 min × longitude − equation of time = 12:00 + 0.5 min − 10.97 min = 11:49:32 UTC, or 12:49 BST. The hour angle at which the sun’s centre is 0.833° below the horizon is cos−1(0.0662) = 86.2°, which is 86.2 × 4 = 345 minutes either side of noon. Recomputing the sun’s position at each of those moments gives sunrise at 07:04 and sunset at 18:34, 11 h 30 min of daylight, the same as the US Naval Observatory’s figures.
The common mistake: assuming noon is the midpoint at 12:00. With daylight saving and the equation of time, the middle of London’s day on 3 October is 12:49, not 12:00, so guessing sunset as “as long after 12:00 as sunrise was before it” is off by almost an hour.
Show Work
Formulas
How Sunrise Is Predicted
Predicting sunrise means knowing where the sun is among the stars on a given day, its declination north or south of the equator, and how far it runs ahead of or behind a perfectly regular clock, the equation of time. Both follow from the Earth’s tilted axis and its slightly elliptical orbit. Almanacs have published sunrise tables for centuries; the method used here is the one in Jean Meeus’s Astronomical Algorithms (1991), as implemented by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in its solar calculator.
The atmosphere complicates the last step. Near the horizon it bends sunlight by about 34 minutes of arc, roughly the width of the sun itself, so at the moment of “sunrise” the sun is still geometrically below the horizon. That is why the standard calculation uses −0.833° rather than 0°, and why very cold or warm air can shift the real moment by a minute or two.
About This Calculator
This calculator gives sunrise, sunset, day length and solar noon, the three twilights and golden and blue hour for 372 cities, your current position or any coordinates, for any date from 1900 to 2100, in the place’s own time zone with daylight saving. It handles the midnight sun and polar night, shows the sun’s height through the day and day length through the year, and lists every step of the calculation. Times are accurate to within about a minute for a flat horizon at sea level.
Your location is only read if you press My location, and it stays in your browser. Everything runs on your device.
Related tools: World Clock, Timezone Converter, and Date Calculator.
Frequently Asked Questions
What counts as sunrise, and how accurate is this?
Sunrise is the moment the top edge of the sun touches a flat, sea-level horizon. Because the atmosphere bends light and the sun has a width, that happens when the sun’s centre is 0.833° below the horizon. These times agree with the US Naval Observatory’s to the minute; some websites use a simpler formula and differ by a minute or two. Hills, buildings and height above sea level can move the real moment by a few minutes more.
What are civil, nautical and astronomical twilight?
Stages of dusk and dawn defined by how far the sun’s centre is below the horizon: civil twilight ends at 6° (outdoor activities need lights after this), nautical at 12° (the horizon at sea can no longer be seen) and astronomical at 18° (the sky is fully dark for faint stars).
What is golden hour?
The time after sunrise and before sunset when the sun is low, giving warm, soft light that photographers like. This calculator uses the common definition of the sun between 6° above and 4° below the horizon. Blue hour is the deeper twilight just after, between 4° and 6° below.
Why isn’t solar noon at 12:00?
Three reasons: your position within the time zone (each degree of longitude is 4 minutes), daylight saving time (an hour), and the equation of time, a wobble of up to about 16 minutes caused by the tilt of the Earth’s axis and its elliptical orbit. On 3 October 2026 solar noon in London is at 12:49 BST.
Why is the earliest sunset before the shortest day?
The equation of time shifts solar noon later through December, so evenings lengthen before the mornings do. At about 40° north, the earliest sunset comes in early December and the latest sunrise in early January, even though the shortest day is around 21 December.
How do I use the Sunrise & Sunset Calculator?
Simply type your numbers and read the result, which refreshes the instant you change something. There is nothing to submit and nothing to wait for.
Does it cost anything or need an account?
No. The tool is completely free, there is no account to create, and it keeps working offline after the page first loads.
Is anything I type uploaded?
No. The tool works entirely on your device, so the values you enter never leave your browser.
Common Use Cases
Photography
Plan shoots for golden hour and blue hour at a location before you travel.
Outdoor plans
Know how much daylight a hike has: on 21 December 2026 London gets 7 h 50 min between sunrise and sunset, against 16 h 38 min on 21 June.
Travel to high latitudes
See when the sun never sets in Tromsø in midsummer, or never rises there in midwinter.
Religious and cultural times
Sunrise, sunset and twilight times underlie many prayer and fasting schedules; use them as a guide alongside your community’s own timetable.
Solar panels and gardening
Compare day length and the sun’s highest point across the year.
Last updated: