Where Is the Sun Right Now? Direction, Height and Sun Path

The Sun’s position is two numbers: its direction on the compass (the azimuth, in degrees clockwise from true north) and its height above the horizon (the altitude, from 0° on the horizon to 90° straight overhead). This page gives both for your town right now, the Sun’s path across the sky hour by hour, and the direction of sunrise and sunset on any day.

How to use it

Type your town (or “lat, lon”, or use your location). The answer says which way to look and how high the Sun is, and it updates every minute while the page is open. If the Sun is down, it says when and where it rises. The dial below is a compass seen from above, like a map: north at the top, east on the right, the horizon at the edge and the point straight overhead in the middle. The orange line is the Sun’s path that day, with a dot for every hour it is up, green where it rises and red where it sets. The dashed lines are its paths on June 21 and December 21, the highest and lowest of the year, so every other day of the year falls between them. To plan another day, pick it under “Day”. The answer then gives the sunrise, the sunset and the Sun’s highest point that day. The link keeps your town and day. Your own location never goes into it.

Where the numbers come from

The page works out the Sun’s position in your browser from NOAA’s solar series, the same maths the Golden Hour Calculator uses for sunrise, sunset and the golden hour. It gives the numbers the way the U.S. Naval Observatory’s “Altitude and Azimuth of the Sun” tables do: “The altitude and azimuth values are for the center of the apparent disk of the Sun or Moon. The altitude values include the effect of standard atmospheric refraction when the object is above the horizon. The azimuth values are computed with respect to true north (not magnetic).” We checked the page against those tables for New York, Anchorage, Honolulu, Sydney and Quito on three days, and it lands within about a tenth of a degree. The Sun itself is about half a degree wide. Sunrise and sunset follow the Observatory’s definition: the moment the top edge of the Sun touches a level horizon, with the Sun’s centre 0.8333° below it.

The Sun over New York on October 15, 2026

A mid-October day: the Sun rose a little south of due east and crossed the south at about 40° up. These are the Naval Observatory’s own figures, in Eastern Daylight Time, beside this page’s:

The Sun was highest at 12:41 PM, 41° up, due south, not at 12:00: in New York in summer time, solar noon falls about 40 minutes to an hour after noon on the clock.

Worked examples

• A hotel room for the sunrise. In New York the Sun rises at 57° (east-northeast) on June 21, 2027 and at 121° (east-southeast) on December 21, 2026, 63° apart on the horizon. A window that faces the sunrise in winter can miss it in summer, so check the direction for the dates of your stay.
• A shadow at noon. At its highest on December 21, 2026 the Sun is 26° up over New York, and a 6-foot person casts a 12-foot shadow. On June 21, 2027 it is 73° up, and the same shadow is 2 feet long. For a beach umbrella or a shaded parking spot, the shadow falls opposite the Sun’s direction.
• Almost straight overhead. Key West lies just north of the Tropic of Cancer. On June 21, 2027 the Sun there climbs to 89° at 1:28 PM, and a 6-foot person’s shadow is about 1 inch long.
• The Sun in the north. South of the equator the midday Sun is in the north. In Sydney on December 21, 2026 it stands 80° up, due north, at 12:53 PM, and it sets at 8:05 PM in the west-southwest (241°).
• A winter day in Alaska. On December 21, 2026 the Sun over Anchorage gets only 5.5° above the horizon, with 5 h 27 min of daylight. Any hill or building to the south hides it all day.

Common mistakes

• Expecting the Sun to rise due east. It rises due east only around the equinoxes in March and September. North of the tropics it rises north of east from March to September and south of east from September to March.
• Using a phone compass set to magnetic north. The directions here, like the Naval Observatory’s, are from true north. Magnetic north is off by an amount that depends on where you are; NOAA’s magnetic declination calculator gives yours. Most phones can show true north in their compass settings.
• Taking 12:00 on the clock as midday. The Sun is highest at solar noon, which can be more than an hour from 12:00 because of time zones and summer time. The page gives the solar noon for your day.
• Forgetting the hills. The sunrise and sunset times and directions assume a level horizon. Behind a ridge or a city skyline the Sun appears later and higher up, and disappears earlier.

In the right light

Where and how to use it: sunrise hikes worth the early alarm, landscape photography in the golden hour, travel photography on a phone, photographing crowded landmarks and group photos on the beach. For the golden and blue hour times, use the Golden Hour Calculator; for the Moon, Where Is the Moon Right Now?