Introduction
This Sunrise Sunset Calculator shows you when the sun comes up and goes down for any place on Earth, on any date. Type in a city, use your GPS, or enter your own latitude and longitude. Pick a date, and you get sunrise, sunset, and solar noon times right away.
You also get more than just two times. The tool shows civil, nautical, and astronomical twilight, plus golden hour and blue hour windows for photos. A color timeline maps out the whole 24-hour day, and a slider lets you check the sun's height and direction at any minute. If you want to study the sun's height on its own, the Sun Angle Calculator focuses just on that, and the Moon Phase Calculator covers the night side of the sky.
Other tools let you find shadow length, look up the exact dates of equinoxes and solstices, and view a full year of sunrise and sunset times in one table. Your elevation and time zone are part of the math, so the times match what you really see outside.
How to use our Sunrise Sunset Calculator
Enter your location, the date, and your time zone. The calculator shows sunrise, sunset, solar noon, twilight times, golden hour, day length, sun position, and a full year of daily sun times.
Location input method: Pick how you want to set your spot — City Search, GPS Auto-Detect, or Manual Coordinates.
City, address or place name: Type a city like "Denver, CO" or "Paris, France". Add a state or country if the name is common.
Detect My Location: Click this button to use your device GPS. Your browser will ask you to allow it first.
Latitude: Type the degrees, minutes, and seconds, then pick N or S. Values run from −90° to +90°. If you need the gap between two sets of coordinates, try the Lat Long Distance Calculator.
Longitude: Type the degrees, minutes, and seconds, then pick E or W. Values run from −180° to +180°.
Elevation above sea level: Enter your height above the sea in metres or feet. Higher ground makes sunrise a bit earlier and sunset a bit later. To swap units, the Meters to Feet Calculator handles the conversion.
Month, Day, and Year: Choose the date you want sun times for. The Date Calculator and Days Until Calculator help if you are planning ahead.
Sync to Today: Click to jump the date back to today.
Date slider: Drag it to move through the year one day at a time. Use the − and + buttons to step back or forward one day.
Time zone identifier: This fills in on its own from your location, like "America/Denver". To compare clocks in two places, see the Time Zone Calculator.
UTC offset: The hours your zone sits ahead of or behind UTC, such as −7 or +5.5. Change it only if the auto value is wrong. The Time Zone Difference Calculator is handy when you travel across zones.
Daylight Saving Time: Pick "Yes" to add one hour, or "No" for standard time.
Calculate, Reset and Live Mode: Press Calculate to run the math. Reset puts everything back to the start. Live Mode tracks the sun right now and updates every second.
Sun position scrubber: Slide it to any local time to see the sun's altitude, azimuth, distance, and light phase at that moment.
Distance unit: Show the distance to the sun in kilometres, miles, or AU. The Km To Miles Calculator covers other distance swaps.
Object height and units: Enter how tall an object is, then pick the units for the object and its shadow. The tool gives the shadow length at the scrubbed time.
Reverse sun position lookup: Enter a target sun altitude, a target azimuth, a search period, and a tolerance. Press Search to list the dates and times when the sun hits that spot in the sky.
Jump to month: Pick a month to highlight and scroll to those days in the year table.
Sunrise and Sunset: What They Mean
Sunrise is the moment the top edge of the sun first shows above the horizon. Sunset is the moment that same edge slips out of sight. Earth spins once about every 24 hours, so the sun looks like it moves across the sky. It does not really move — we do.
Why Sunrise Times Change
Earth is tilted about 23.4 degrees as it orbits the sun. That tilt is why days get longer in spring and shorter in fall. Near the equator, day length stays close to 12 hours all year. The farther you live from the equator, the bigger the swing between summer and winter days.
Your longitude also matters. Two towns in the same time zone can see the sun rise many minutes apart because one sits farther east. Use the Time Duration Calculator if you want to measure those gaps in hours and minutes.
Solar Noon and the Equation of Time
Solar noon is when the sun is highest in the sky for the day. It is often not at 12:00 on your clock. Earth's orbit is a slight oval and its axis is tilted, so the sun runs a little fast or slow compared to clock time. That gap is called the equation of time, and it can reach about 16 minutes. Astronomers date these events with Julian numbers, which the Julian Date Calculator works out for you.
Twilight: The Light Before and After
The sky does not go dark the second the sun sets. Air high above you keeps catching sunlight. Astronomers split this glow into three stages, based on how far the sun sits below the horizon:
- Civil twilight (0° to −6°): bright enough to read outside or drive without headlights.
- Nautical twilight (−6° to −12°): the horizon at sea is still faintly visible, and bright stars show.
- Astronomical twilight (−12° to −18°): almost fully dark. Past −18°, the sky is true night.
Golden Hour and Blue Hour
Photographers love these two windows. Golden hour runs from about the horizon up to 6° sun altitude, when light is warm, soft, and low. Blue hour is during civil twilight, when the sky turns a deep, even blue. Both are short near the equator and much longer near the poles.
Refraction and Elevation
Earth's air bends light like a lens. This bending lifts the sun's image by about half a degree, so you actually see sunrise a couple of minutes before the sun is truly up — and sunset a couple of minutes after it is truly down. How strongly the air bends light depends on its thickness, which the Air Density Calculator explains. Standing higher also helps. On a mountain or tall building, you see farther over the curve of Earth, so the sun rises a bit earlier and sets a bit later.
Midnight Sun and Polar Night
Above about 66.5° north or below 66.5° south, the sun can stay up for a full day in summer (midnight sun) or never rise in winter (polar night). Places like Alaska, northern Norway, and Antarctica see this every year.
Shadows Tell You the Sun's Height
A shadow is shortest at solar noon and stretches out near sunrise and sunset. If you know an object's height and the sun's altitude, the shadow length is simply the height divided by the tangent of that angle. Low sun, long shadow. To check the trig by hand, the Trig Calculator and Tan Inverse Calculator both help, and the Angle Calculator is useful for converting between degrees and radians.
Why People Use Sunrise and Sunset Times
Farmers plan planting and harvest, often alongside a Plant Spacing Calculator or Fertilizer Calculator. Photographers chase golden hour. Hikers and boaters need to know when light runs out. Solar panel owners track daylight hours and pair this data with a Solar Panel Calculator or the broader Solar Calculator to size a system. Many faiths set prayer times by the sun. Gardeners count daylight to pick the right plants, and early risers can line up a wake-up time with the Sleep Calculator.