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.
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°.
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.
Month, Day, and Year: Choose the date you want sun times for.
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".
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.
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.
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 and sunset are the moments when the upper edge of the sun's disk is on the horizon, assuming average air and a level horizon.1 At sunrise it is just appearing, and at sunset it is just slipping 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's axis is tilted 23.44 degrees to its orbit around the sun.2 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.
Solar Noon and the Equation of Time
Solar noon is the moment the sun's center crosses your meridian, the north-south line in the sky, and at low and middle latitudes it is when the sun is highest for the day.1 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.4 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. Twilight is the time before sunrise and after sunset when sunlight scattered by Earth's upper atmosphere still gives real light.1 Astronomers split it into three stages, based on how far the center of the sun sits below the horizon:
- Civil twilight (sun down to 6° below the horizon): outside civil twilight, artificial light is normally needed for ordinary outdoor activities.1
- Nautical twilight (6° to 12° below): the horizon is still visible, even on a moonless night, so mariners can take star sights.1
- Astronomical twilight (12° to 18° below): beyond 18°, scattered sunlight is fainter than starlight and other natural light.1
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. At the horizon, this bending lifts the sun's image by an average of 34 arcminutes, a little more than half a degree.1 Sunrise and sunset are computed with the sun's center 50 arcminutes below the horizon: 34 for refraction plus 16 for the sun's apparent radius.1 So you see sunrise a few minutes before the sun is geometrically up, and sunset a few minutes after it is 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). Those lines sit at 90° minus Earth's tilt. 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.
Why People Use Sunrise and Sunset Times
Farmers plan planting and harvest. Photographers chase golden hour. Hikers and boaters need to know when light runs out. Solar panel owners track daylight hours 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.