What time are sunrise, sunset, golden hour and blue hour?
Pick a spot near Coalville, a UK city or your own coordinates, then choose a date. You get sunrise, sunset, day length, golden hour, blue hour and all three twilights in UK local time.
How the tool works
The times come from a standard solar position formula (the NOAA method). The page checks the height of the sun above the horizon for every minute of the day and finds when it crosses each angle. Sunrise and sunset use -0.83 degrees, which allows for the size of the sun and the bending of light by the air. On a flat horizon the result is good to about a minute.
Golden hour and blue hour have no official definition. This page uses the sun between -4 and +6 degrees for golden hour and between -8 and -4 degrees for blue hour. Civil, nautical and astronomical twilight use the standard angles of -6, -12 and -18 degrees. In UK summer the sun does not drop far enough for astronomical darkness, so those rows show none.
For landscape work, arrive at least 30 minutes before the golden hour window starts, and remember that hills, trees and buildings will cut your real light short. The year chart shows how fast the days change: in the UK they gain or lose a few minutes a day around the equinoxes and almost nothing near the solstices.
Questions
How is golden hour calculated here?
It is the period when the sun is between 4 degrees below and 6 degrees above the horizon, in the morning and again in the evening. This is a common rule of thumb, not a fixed standard, so the look of the light will vary with cloud and haze.
Why do some twilight rows say none?
In the UK summer the sun stays too close to the horizon overnight to reach the deepest angles. At Coalville there is no astronomical darkness from roughly mid May to late July, and further north the nautical twilight rows can disappear as well.
Are the times in GMT or BST?
They are always UK local time, so the clocks changing is already included. This applies to custom coordinates too, so a place far from Britain will show UK clock times.
More photography tools: Moon Phase and Milky Way Planner · Long Exposure Calculator