How to use this tool
- Choose a place. The tool starts with a place in your time zone. Tap the location field to search for any city or town, or use your current location.
- Choose a date. Use the arrows to step through days, pick a date from the calendar, or jump to a solstice or equinox.
- Read the answer. The top card shows sunrise, sunset, day length and solar noon, with the directions in which the sun rises and sets. The coloured bar shows the whole day, from night through twilight and golden hour to daylight.
- Go deeper. Below you will find all three kinds of twilight, golden and blue hour, a month table, a yearly daylight chart and a sun path diagram.
Every setting is saved in the address bar, so you can bookmark or share a link to exactly what you see.
What the numbers mean
- Sunrise and sunset are the moments the upper edge of the sun crosses a flat horizon.
- Day length is the time from sunrise to sunset. The line below it tells you how much longer or shorter the day is than the day before.
- Solar noon is when the sun is highest, exactly halfway between sunrise and sunset. It is rarely at 12:00 on the clock; see what is solar noon.
- Direction is the compass bearing (azimuth) of the sun at sunrise and sunset. It changes a lot through the year: at mid-northern latitudes the sun rises in the north-east in summer and in the south-east in winter.
- Civil, nautical and astronomical dawn and dusk mark the three stages of twilight; see twilight explained.
The daylight chart
The yearly chart shows each day of the year as a thin vertical strip. The light yellow area is daylight, the blue shades are the three stages of twilight, and the darkest blue is night. The dashed line through the middle is solar noon.
Two details are worth knowing. The sudden jumps in spring and autumn are the clock changes for daylight saving time. And the earliest sunset of the year does not happen on the shortest day, but about ten days before it, for reasons explained in why the earliest sunset is not on the shortest day.
Worked example
On the June solstice in London, the sun rises at about 04:43 and sets at about 21:21, a day length of about 16 hours 38 minutes. Civil twilight lasts until after 22:00, and around this date there is no astronomical night at all, because the sun never gets 18° below the horizon. On the December solstice the same city gets only about 7 hours 49 minutes of daylight, from about 08:04 to 15:53.
Accuracy
The calculations use a professional astronomy library and are tested against official almanac data, agreeing within a minute. The real sunrise you see can differ by a minute or two because the atmosphere varies from day to day, and by more if your horizon is not flat. More in how sunrise and sunset are calculated.
Last updated September 23, 2026