Golden hour calculator

Pick a city and you get every day of the month in one table — golden hour morning and evening, blue hour, sunrise, sunset, solar noon, both twilights, in that city’s own local time. Ask for a single day instead and you get the Sun’s path drawn out, its bearing at any hour, and the shadow it will throw. Free, no account, nothing stored.

What it does, and why it is here

Photographers name light by where the Sun is, not by the clock, and every one of those positions is a calculation involving your latitude, your longitude, the date, and a time zone rule that moves. “Golden hour at 7pm” is meaningless without a place attached.

Two things make this harder than looking up sunset. The first is that the golden hour is not an hour — it is however long the Sun takes to climb its first six degrees, which is twenty minutes at the equator and can be most of an evening in Scotland. The second is that a shoot is planned ahead: you need next Saturday, or the best evening of next month, not today.

So this page answers by the month, in one table you can scan for the day you want, and by the day, in enough detail to place a camera: which direction the Sun will come up, how high it will stand at four o’clock, and how long a shadow it will throw.

What you fill in

• City — type and pick from the suggestions; the coordinates and the time zone come with it. Every time in the answer is that city’s local time, including its daylight saving.
• The month’s calendar — this month or the next, which is the planning view.
• Or one precise day — a date, any date, for the detailed view. The answer for a single day also carries a card you can share.
• An hour of the day, optional — and the answer adds the Sun’s height and bearing at exactly that hour.
• Object height in metres, optional — whatever will cast the shadow, a person by default. It turns the Sun’s elevation into a shadow length you can actually pace out.

What you get back

For a month, one row per day: sunrise, sunset, solar noon, day length, civil and nautical dawn and dusk, when the morning golden hour ends and the evening one starts, the shadow length for your object, and moonrise and moonset. Underneath, the month in short — how far sunrise and sunset drift across the month, how much day length changes, how long the twilights are on the first day against the last, and which evening has the longest golden hour. That last line is the one that picks the date of a shoot.

For a single day, the two golden windows written out, and then:

• The Sun’s path, drawn — bearing left to right, height up, a label every two hours, with civil twilight dashed below the horizon. It shows in one glance whether the Sun will clear the ridge behind your subject.
• Sunrise and sunset bearings, in degrees and as a compass direction. This is what tells you which window the light will come through, or which side of the valley to stand on.
• Shadows through the day — the length your object throws, hour by hour.
• The Sun at your chosen hour — its height, its bearing, and the shadow; or a plain statement that it is below the horizon and there is no shadow at all.

What it does not do

It computes the sky, not the weather. A golden hour on a cloudy evening is a grey hour, and no ephemeris knows that.

It also assumes a flat horizon. A mountain to the west takes the last half hour of your golden light and the tool will not know — the Sun’s path chart is there so you can judge that yourself against the skyline you know. And it works from a city, so a village is served by the nearest place in the list; a few kilometres shift sunrise by seconds, which is well inside what matters.

The four windows of a day

Every column in the table is a position of the Sun, and this is what each one means.

So the golden hour is the gap between sunrise and golden hour end in the morning, and between golden hour start and sunset in the evening. The blue hour is the gap on the far side of each: civil dawn to sunrise, and sunset to civil dusk. Nautical twilight, six degrees further down, is where the last usable light goes and the stars come up.

Questions

Is it free?

Yes. No account, no key, no limit — and the city you search for is used to answer and then forgotten.

How long is the golden hour, really?

However long the Sun takes to climb six degrees, which depends on the angle at which it rises: steeply at the equator, at a long slant near the poles. Twenty-odd minutes in the tropics, an hour and more in northern Europe in summer. The table gives yours, day by day.

Which months can I ask for?

The calendar serves the current month and the next. Any single day can be asked for on its own, at any date.

Are the times local?

Yes — the city’s own local time, daylight saving included. That is what makes a city necessary rather than a country: one country can hold several zones, and the rules move.

Why is my village missing from the list?

The list holds cities. Pick the nearest one: a few kilometres change sunrise by seconds, which is far inside the accuracy anyone can use in the field.

Why is solar noon not at 12:00?

Two reasons stacked. Your longitude puts you east or west of the meridian your zone is named after, which shifts noon by up to half an hour; and the Earth’s orbit is not a circle, which shifts it by up to a further quarter of an hour depending on the season.

What is the difference between civil, nautical and astronomical twilight?

How far the Sun is below the horizon: six degrees, twelve, and eighteen. Civil is the blue hour and the last light you can hand-hold in; nautical is when the horizon is still visible at sea; astronomical is when the sky is as dark as it will get.

Does it work in the southern hemisphere?

Yes, and it will tell you the truth about high latitudes too: in a polar summer some columns have no answer at all, because the Sun never crosses that angle.

What is the shadow figure for?

Placing things. It answers “how long will the shadow of this building be at four o’clock” and “when is the shadow the same length as the object” — which happens exactly when the Sun stands at 45°.

Sources and further reading

• Golden hour — the light, and why it is warm.
• Twilight — the three definitions the columns use.
• Equation of time — why solar noon wanders.