What the page shows
The bar at the top is the whole day, from midnight to midnight in local time. The light part is the time between sunrise and sunset, the blue parts are civil twilight, and the red line is now. Below it, the two columns give today’s figures for the Sun and for the Moon, then a table continues for fourteen days.
The site guesses a city from your time zone. Choose another city, or share your position, to get times for the exact place where you are. A few kilometres change the times by seconds; a hundred kilometres east or west changes them by about five minutes at mid latitudes.
How accurate the times are
The calculation gives the position of the Sun within about one arcminute, which means rise and set times correct to well under a minute for an ideal horizon. In practice three things move the real time:
- Your horizon. A hill of 2° to the west makes the Sun disappear about ten minutes early at mid latitudes.
- Your altitude. From a mountain or a tower you see further over the curve of the Earth: 100 m above the surroundings, the Sun sets nearly two minutes later at mid latitudes.
- The air. Refraction near the horizon changes with temperature and pressure, by up to a minute or two on cold, clear days.
Day length through the year
Days lengthen from the December solstice to the June solstice in the northern hemisphere, and the reverse in the southern hemisphere. The change is fastest around the equinoxes in March and September, when a mid-latitude city gains or loses three minutes of daylight every day, and almost stops around the solstices. Near the equator the day stays close to twelve hours all year. Beyond the polar circles the Sun stays up for at least one full day in summer and stays down for at least one in winter, and the page says so instead of giving times.
For photographers and stargazers
The golden hour, when the light is warm and low, is roughly the hour after sunrise and the hour before sunset. The blue hour falls within civil twilight. For the stars, wait until the end of astronomical twilight, about an hour and a half after sunset at mid latitudes, and check the Moon column: a Moon that has set, or not yet risen, leaves the sky dark.
Questions and answers
How are sunrise and sunset defined?
As the moment the upper edge of the Sun touches the horizon. Because the air bends light, the Sun is then really about 0.8° below the horizon. Refraction and the width of the Sun's disc together lengthen the day by six to ten minutes, depending on latitude.
What is civil twilight?
The period when the Sun is between 0° and 6° below the horizon. There is still enough light to be outside without a lamp. Nautical twilight goes down to 12° and astronomical twilight to 18°, after which the sky is fully dark.
Why is solar noon not at 12:00?
Clock time is the same across a whole time zone, while the Sun crosses the meridian at a different moment for each longitude. Daylight saving time adds an hour, and the Earth's tilted axis and oval orbit shift solar noon by up to 16 minutes during the year.
Why is the earliest sunset not on the shortest day?
For the same reason. Around the December solstice, solar noon drifts later each day, which pushes both sunrise and sunset later. At mid northern latitudes the earliest sunset comes one to two weeks before the solstice and the latest sunrise one to two weeks after it.
Why are there days with no moonrise?
The Moon rises about 50 minutes later each day. Roughly once a month a moonrise slips past midnight and a calendar day goes by without one. The same happens with moonset.
Updated November 11, 2026