Sunrise & Sunset Calculator
Find sunrise, sunset, golden hour, twilight, and moon phase for any location.
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How sunrise and sunset times are calculated
Sunrise and sunset times are computed from two things: your geographic coordinates and the position of the sun on a given date. The tool first determines the sun's declination — its angular distance north or south of the celestial equator — using the date's day-of-year value in a standard astronomical formula. Combined with your latitude, that declination defines the hour angle at which the sun appears to cross the horizon, and converting the hour angle back into clock time produces local sunrise and sunset. The calculation also subtracts about 50 arcminutes to account for atmospheric refraction and the sun's apparent radius, matching the official definition used by almanacs.
Twilight phases use the same geometry with different horizon thresholds. Civil twilight begins when the sun is 6° below the horizon, nautical twilight at 12°, and astronomical twilight at 18°. Golden hour, which is less formally defined, is reported as the interval when the sun sits between about 6° above and a few degrees below the horizon, producing warm, soft light. The tool picks up your time zone from your device or the city you selected, then formats every threshold in local time so you can plan photography, outdoor activity, or observation without mentally converting from UTC.
When sunrise and sunset data is useful
Photographers are the most common users, because golden hour and blue hour produce the colour quality they want and shift by several minutes every day. Checking the sunrise and sunset times for a shoot location a week in advance lets a crew confirm call times, light direction, and the length of the useful shooting window. Hikers and climbers use the same data to make sure they are off an exposed ridge before civil twilight ends, and sailors use nautical twilight to plan celestial navigation when the horizon is still visible but stars are bright enough to sight.
The tool is also handy for everyday planning. Early-morning runners can pick the warmest, brightest start, gardeners can track how many usable daylight hours remain on a given weekend, and anyone planning an outdoor meal or ceremony can identify the softest-light window of the day. Edge cases include polar latitudes, where the sun may not rise or set for weeks around the solstices — the calculator reports "no sunrise" or "no sunset" in those cases — and dates near daylight-saving transitions, where times jump by an hour between consecutive days despite the underlying astronomy changing smoothly.