Golden hour in your city

When the light is good where you are: a countdown to the next golden hour, the blue hour, and the sun's height at any minute. Drag the sun to plan the shot. Computed on the spot, nothing uploaded.

Finding your sky

 

Golden hour in 

What this page shows

A countdown to the next golden hour where you are, this morning's and this evening's golden and blue hours, the sun's height and compass direction at any minute, and a table of the week ahead. Every city has its own page, so a search for the city plus golden hour brings you to today's windows with no clicking.

Golden hour is a height, not a time

The light goes warm and soft when the sun sits between about 6 degrees above the horizon and 4 degrees below it; blue hour follows, from 4 to 6 degrees below. How long that takes depends on where you are: twenty minutes at the equator, an hour in London in June, all afternoon near the Arctic Circle. This calculator uses the sun's real position rather than a fixed hour before sunset, which is why its windows differ from the rule of thumb.

Planning with the sky band

Drag the sun to the minute you plan to shoot and the readout gives its height and direction, so you know which side the light comes from. Pick the day from the week table, arrive fifteen minutes before the window, and remember the times assume a flat horizon: a ridge or a skyline to the west ends the evening light early.

What stays here

Everything on this page is arithmetic on a latitude, a longitude and the clock. Your rough location comes from the network address your connection presents, city-level at best; the Use my location button asks the browser for a better one and never sends it anywhere. No account, no cookies, nothing typed here is stored. The only thing this page records is that a city was looked up, and which one.