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Golden hour calculator: sunset time and azimuth

The golden hour isn't really an hour, or a fixed time of day — it's a range of sun elevations from +6° to −4°, where light turns sidelong, warm, and low-contrast. Enter your coordinates and date — the calculator works out when this window opens and closes, where the sun sets, and how high it climbs at noon.

Input data

Couldn't determine your location — enter coordinates manually

Result

Golden hourThe evening window is shown. The morning one mirrors it: the same span before and after sunrise. In summer in temperate latitudes, golden hour can run over an hour; near the equator, about twenty minutes. —
Blue hour —
Sunrise —
Sunset —
Sunset azimuthMeasured clockwise from north: 180° is south, 270° is due west. Over the year the sunset azimuth swings by tens of degrees, so the same façade is lit differently month to month. — °
Sunrise azimuth — °
Sun elevation at noonThe lower the sun sits at noon, the closer the whole day gets to golden-hour light. In temperate latitudes in December, that's around 11° — a “golden day” instead of a golden hour. — °

The calculation doesn't account for terrain or elevation above the horizon: if a building or hill stands to the west, the sun will disappear earlier than calculated — check against satellite imagery and street-level panoramas. A dash instead of a time means polar day or polar night.

How it's calculated

  1. From the date we find the sun's declination — how far it's tilted from the celestial equator on that day of the year.
  2. From declination and latitude we get the hour angle for the elevation we need: −0.833° for sunrise and sunset (correcting for refraction and disk radius), +6° to −4° for golden hour, and −4° to −6° for blue hour.
  3. Solar time is converted to civil time by correcting for longitude and the equation of time — which is where the accuracy to the minute comes from.

Declination δ ≈ 23.44°·sin(360°(N − 81)/365). Hour angle for an event at elevation h: cos H = (sin h − sin φ·sin δ)/(cos φ·cos δ). Sunrise and sunset are taken at h = −0.833° (refraction plus the disk's radius); golden hour runs from +6° to −4°, blue hour from −4° to −6°. Civil time comes from the correction TC = 4·(λ − 15·UTC) + the equation of time.

This is an estimate

Verify final values against current standards, the project design, and equipment nameplates.

Explained in the article Где будет солнце: планирование по эфемеридам

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