Sunrise and sunset times

Pick a place and a day for its sunrise, sunset and day length, with twilight and golden hour. You can also load a route and see the daylight for each day of the trip.

Daylight along your route

Load a route and say when you start and how far you'll go each day. You get the sunrise and sunset where each day ends, and whether you'll be in before dark. Each day is in the local time where it ends, so a trip across a time zone still adds up.

About the times

Twilight

Sunrise and sunset are when the top of the sun crosses the horizon.

Civil twilight lasts until the sun is 6° down, and you can usually still see the path without a torch.

Nautical twilight runs on to 12°, when the horizon fades at sea, and after 18° it's properly dark.

Golden hour

Photographers call the time just after sunrise and before sunset golden hour, when the light is low and warm.

Here it's the time the sun is less than 6° above the horizon.

Close to the poles it can last half the evening, and near the equator it's over in under half an hour.

How we work it out

The times use the same method as the solar calculator of NOAA, the US weather and oceans agency, and they're worked out in your browser.

We checked them against NASA's data for places from Quito to Svalbard and they agree to within a minute.

In a valley or behind a ridge the sun appears later and goes earlier, and up a mountain you see it a little longer.

Questions people ask

What time is sunrise and sunset today?

Search for the place at the top of this page, or use your location. It opens on today's date in that place's own time, and the arrows move a day at a time.

Why is the day a different length from yesterday?

The earth is tilted, so the days get longer until the longest day of the year and shorter after it. The change is quickest around the equinoxes in March and September, when it's several minutes a day in northern Europe, and almost nothing around the solstices.

Do the times allow for summer time?

Yes. They're shown in the place's local time on that date, with summer time when it applies, and the page says which time zone it's using.

What happens near the poles?

North of the Arctic Circle, and south of the Antarctic one, the sun doesn't set for weeks around the longest day, and around the shortest it doesn't come up at all. The page says so instead of showing a time, and the year chart shows how long it lasts. Have a look at Tromsø or Longyearbyen.

Is anything I enter sent anywhere?

The times are worked out in your browser. A place you search for is looked up on OpenStreetMap, and for a route a simplified line goes to our server to name each day's town. The route file itself stays on your device.

Sunrise and sunset around the world

Sun and time: Day and night map · World clock · Time zone map