Golden Hour Calculator

Pick a city and a date and I'll tell you when morning and evening golden hour and blue hour start and end, in that place's local time. Including the days with no night, or no sunrise.

Free Instant No sign-up

Where and when

North and east are positive; south and west negative. Editing the coordinates or the zone switches to “Custom coordinates”.

Evening golden hour
–
–sunrise
–sunset
–solar noon · –
–sun above the horizon

Quick cases

How golden hour and blue hour are calculated

Golden hour isn't a time on the clock: it's the stretch the sun spends between two altitudes above the horizon. There is no official definition, so we use the convention most photographers use (PhotoPills'), measured at the centre of the sun:

  • Blue hour: −6° to −4° (the darker part of civil twilight, which runs from 0° to −6°).
  • Golden hour: −4° to +6°.
  • Sunrise and sunset: sun's centre at −0.833°.

The sun's position comes from NOAA's algorithm (based on Jean Meeus): for any instant it works out the sun's declination and the equation of time, and from those its altitude at your latitude and longitude. We then use bisection, down to a fraction of a second, to find the exact moment it crosses each threshold. Times are shown rounded to the minute, and every duration is the difference between the two times you see, so the numbers add up.

All the altitudes are geometric (no refraction), just like the astronomical definition of civil twilight. The one exception is already built into sunrise and sunset's −0.833°: 34′ of average refraction plus the sun's 16′ radius, the moment the top of the disc touches the horizon. If the +6° were measured with refraction (apparent altitude, 0.14° higher), evening golden hour would start a little later: half a minute in Quito, nearly a minute in New York and a minute and a half in London in December; morning golden hour would end about as much earlier.

Times are local to the place you pick, with its IANA time zone and daylight saving time. NOAA quotes ±1 minute between 72° north and south, and up to 10 minutes beyond; the horizon is an ideal sea-level one.

Example: golden hour in New York on 21 June

On the 2026 summer solstice in New York (UTC−4, daylight saving time):

  • Morning blue hour: 04:52 – 05:05 (13 min).
  • Morning golden hour: 05:05 – 06:06 (1 h 1 min), with sunrise at 05:25.
  • Solar noon: 12:58, with the sun at 72.7°.
  • Evening golden hour: 19:49 – 20:51 (1 h 2 min), with sunset at 20:31.
  • Evening blue hour: 20:51 – 21:04 (13 min).

The takeaway: evening golden hour starts 42 minutes before sunset and lasts 20 minutes after it. Turn up when the sun touches the horizon and you've missed two thirds of it.

Golden hour at high latitudes: white nights and polar night

Far from the equator the sun may not cross a threshold at all on a given day, and the calculator says so instead of making up times:

  • Reykjavík, 21 June: the sun only gets down to −2.4°. There is no blue hour, and golden hour lasts all night: from 22:07 to 04:53 the next day (6 h 46 min).
  • Reykjavík, 21 December: the sun peaks at 2.4°. All of the daylight is golden hour: 10:30 to 16:22.
  • Tromsø, 21 June: midnight sun. It doesn't set (its lowest is 3.1°), but from 22:35 to 02:57 it is below 6°: night-time golden hour.
  • Tromsø, 21 December: polar night. The sun doesn't rise (it peaks at −3.1°), but from 10:30 to 12:55 it is between −4° and +6°: by convention, golden hour with no sun, between two blue hours (09:31 – 10:30 and 12:55 – 13:53).

Some calculators say Reykjavík has no golden hour in June. It does: what it doesn't have is a blue hour.

Methodology & sources

Every result is computed in your browser with the formula shown above — nothing is sent to a server. The numeric model is based on this data and these references:

Formula reviewed and verified against real-world cases.

Golden hour and blue hour FAQ

How long does golden hour last?
It depends on latitude and date: near the equator the sun drops through the horizon steeply, near the poles it slides along it. Evening golden hour lasts 40–44 minutes in Quito all year round, 52–63 minutes in New York or Madrid, 64–87 in London and from 78 minutes to 2 h 29 min in Stockholm (2026 figures). At mid-latitudes it is shortest around the equinoxes and longest in winter.
Does golden hour start at sunset?
No: it starts before and ends after. With the −4° to +6° convention, evening golden hour begins when the sun drops below 6° and ends when it is 4° below the horizon. In New York on 21 June 2026 it runs from 19:49 to 20:51, with sunset at 20:31: it starts 42 minutes before the sun goes down and lasts 20 minutes after.
What is the difference between blue hour and civil twilight?
Civil twilight is the stretch with the sun between 0° and 6° below the horizon; blue hour is its darker end, from −4° to −6°. So morning blue hour starts exactly at civil dawn, and evening blue hour ends exactly at civil dusk.
Why do other apps give me different times?
Because there is no official definition of golden hour or blue hour: every tool picks its own altitudes. We use −4° to +6° and −6° to −4°, as PhotoPills does; The Photographer’s Ephemeris, for instance, defines golden hour as 0° to +6°, so for them it ends at sunset. With the same convention, what is left is a minute or two: rounding, refraction or simplified formulas.
Does it account for mountains, buildings or altitude?
No. It uses an ideal sea-level horizon with nothing in the way, as NOAA and the U.S. Naval Observatory do. Behind a ridge the direct light goes earlier; from a high viewpoint the horizon sits lower and the sun sets a little later. It can’t know about clouds either.
Does it handle daylight saving time?
Yes. Every city carries its IANA time zone, and times are shown in that place’s local time on that date, clock changes included. On the day of a change the calculator says so: in New York, on 1 November 2026 the clocks go from UTC−4 to UTC−5.