Golden Hour & Sunset Calculator

The golden hour is the time around sunrise and sunset when the Sun is low: from 4° below the horizon to 6° above it. In New York on June 21, 2026 the evening one runs 7:49 to 8:50 p.m., around an 8:30 p.m. sunset. Near the equator it lasts about 40 minutes; farther north, much longer.

How to use it

Type a town and pick it from the list, or type coordinates (a beach or viewpoint the list does not have: 36.46, 25.38), or tap Use my location. Pick the date. The answer is in that place’s own time zone: sunrise and sunset and the direction the Sun is in, the morning and evening golden and blue hours, the hours of daylight, and a bar of the whole day. Flying? Open Which side of the plane sees the sunset?, type where you fly from and to and when you leave, and it follows the Sun along your route.

The rule, and where it comes from

Sunrise and sunset are the U.S. Naval Observatory’s: “Sunrise and sunset conventionally refer to the times when the upper edge of the disk of the Sun is on the horizon.” For the calculation, “For computational purposes, sunrise or sunset is defined to occur when the geometric zenith distance of center of the Sun is 90.8333 degrees.” — the Sun’s centre 0.8333° below the horizon, allowing for the Sun’s size and the air bending its light. Civil twilight ends 6° down: “Civil twilight is defined to begin in the morning, and to end in the evening when the center of the Sun is geometrically 6 degrees below the horizon.”

The golden and blue hours have no official definition, so the calculator gives two sources. PhotoPills: “The golden hour occurs twice during the day: In the morning, it begins when the Sun is at -4° of elevation and it ends when the Sun is at 6° above the horizon.” and “The blue hour occurs twice during the day: In the morning, it begins when the Sun is at -6° of elevation and it ends when the Sun is at -4° above the horizon.” (In the evening it runs the other way.) timeanddate.com draws the bands wider: “However, the warm sunlight that is characteristic for the golden hour most likely occurs when the Sun is between 6 degrees below and 6 degrees above the horizon.” and “However, the blue color spectrum is most likely to emerge when the Sun is between 4 and 8 degrees below the horizon.” The times use PhotoPills’ bands; the wider ones are shown as well. The Sun’s position is NOAA’s solar calculator series, checked against the Naval Observatory’s own times to the minute.

How long the golden hour lasts, place by place

Sunset, then the minutes of the evening golden hour (6° above to 4° below), on the solstices and the September equinox of 2026:

The farther from the equator, the more slanted the Sun’s path through the band, so the longer the golden hour; in each place it is shortest around the equinox.

Worked examples

New York City, June 21, 2026. Morning golden hour 5:04 to 6:06 a.m.; sunrise 5:25 a.m. toward the east-northeast. Evening golden hour 7:49 to 8:50 p.m.; sunset 8:30 p.m. toward the west-northwest; blue hour 8:50 to 9:04 p.m. — which is also where timeanddate.com’s wider golden hour ends.

Anchorage, December 21, 2026. Sunrise 10:14 a.m., sunset 3:41 p.m., and at its highest the Sun is only 5.3° up — never out of the golden band. The light is golden from 9:34 a.m. to 4:21 p.m.

New York to London, June 21, leaving at 7 p.m. The flight is about 7 h 13 min. The Sun sets at about 8:11 p.m. New York time, 1 h 12 min after take-off, on the left side of the plane, and rises again at about 12:41 a.m. New York time (5:41 a.m. in London), 5 h 41 min into the flight — on the left side too.

Quito, September 22, 2026. On the equator at the equinox the Sun goes straight down: the evening golden hour is 5:42 to 6:22 p.m., 40 minutes.

Common mistakes

• Arriving at sunset. In the places above the evening golden hour starts 27 minutes (Quito) to 87 minutes (Anchorage in June) before sunset; by sunset most of it has gone.
• Your phone’s time zone. The times are the place’s own. Planning a shoot in Hawaii from New York, read them as Hawaii time.
• One hour everywhere. It is 40 minutes on the equator and all day in Anchorage in December.
• Mountains and buildings. The Naval Observatory’s times are for a level horizon at sea level: “Local topography (e.g., mountains on the horizon) and the height of the observer can affect the times of rise or set even more.” Behind a ridge the Sun goes early.
• The weather. The calculator knows where the Sun is, not the clouds.

Plan the shot

Read our landscape photography tips for the golden hour and travel photography tips that work on a phone. Up early? Sunrise hikes worth a 4 a.m. alarm. For the sunsets themselves, the sunset spots in Bariloche; after dark, photographing the northern lights and tonight’s aurora forecast. For the flight’s length, the Flight Time Calculator.