Sunrise & Sunset Calculator

With the NOAA solar position equations — the standard astronomical method — including the refraction correction that accounts for the atmosphere bending sunlight around the horizon (official sunrise uses a solar angle of 90.833°, which is why you see the sun slightly before it's geometrically risen). Accuracy is within a minute or two of observatory tables; the residual comes from atmospheric conditions varying daily and your exact elevation. For planning photos, runs, or flights, that's fully sufficient.

Golden hour is roughly the hour after the sunrise time and the hour before the sunset time shown — sun low, light warm and directional, shadows long. Blue hour is the 20–40 minutes on the other side of those moments, inside the dawn/dusk window shown, when the sky glows deep blue before dark. Both stretch or compress with latitude and season: near the equator golden hour is brutally short; at high summer latitudes it can last much of the evening. The dawn and dusk times here bracket the whole usable-light window.

Sunrise and sunset are the sun's edge crossing the horizon. Dawn and dusk here are civil twilight — the sun 6° below the horizon — which is the practical 'enough natural light to see and work' boundary used in aviation and law (many jurisdictions define headlight and hunting hours by it). There are two deeper grades: nautical (12°, horizon still visible at sea) and astronomical (18°, fully dark for telescopes). The gap between dawn and sunrise runs 25–35 minutes at mid-latitudes, longer toward the poles.

Because the rate of change follows the sun's declination, which moves fastest at the equinoxes and stalls at the solstices — it's a sine wave, steepest in the middle. Around the March and September equinoxes, mid-latitude days gain or lose 2–3 minutes daily (a noticeable 15+ minutes a week), while near the solstices the length barely moves for a fortnight — the word solstice literally means 'sun stands still.' The tomorrow-comparison line makes this visible: check it in March versus late June.