# sunhour

> Photographer-friendly sunrise, sunset, golden hour, blue hour, twilight and moon-phase calculator for any place on Earth. 219 hand-curated city pages plus an editorial blog on planning around natural light.

sunhour computes solar times using the NOAA Solar Position Algorithm (accurate to ~1 minute). Moon phase, illumination, moonrise and moonset use Meeus / Conway approximations. Locations are resolved either by IP (ip-api.com), city slug, or explicit lat/lon. Pages are server-rendered with Laravel and cached.

## Features

- Sunrise, sunset, solar noon, day length for today
- Golden hour (morning & evening) — the warm, low-angle magic window
- Blue hour (morning & evening) — the cool 10–20 min after sunset / before sunrise
- Civil, nautical, and astronomical twilight stages
- Live sun position (altitude + azimuth) right now
- Moon phase, illumination percentage, age, moonrise / moonset
- Polar day / polar night handling for high-latitude cities
- IP-based auto-detection of the visitor's city
- 219 prebuilt city pages (Berlin, Tokyo, Sydney, Reykjavik, Cape Town, Rio, etc.)

## Pages

- [Home — golden hour for your current location](https://sunhour.app)
- [Browse all 219 cities](https://sunhour.app/sun-times)
- [Blog — field notes on light and planning shoots](https://sunhour.app/blog)
- [About — what the tool does and how the math works](https://sunhour.app/about)
- [Privacy](https://sunhour.app/privacy)
- [Terms](https://sunhour.app/terms)
- [Cookies](https://sunhour.app/cookies)
- [RSS feed](https://sunhour.app/blog/feed.xml)
- [Sitemap](https://sunhour.app/sitemap.xml)

## Popular city pages

- [Shanghai, China sunrise & sunset](https://sunhour.app/sun-times/shanghai-cn)
- [Beijing, China sunrise & sunset](https://sunhour.app/sun-times/beijing-cn)
- [Shenzhen, China sunrise & sunset](https://sunhour.app/sun-times/shenzhen-cn)
- [Guangzhou, China sunrise & sunset](https://sunhour.app/sun-times/guangzhou-cn)
- [Istanbul, Turkey sunrise & sunset](https://sunhour.app/sun-times/istanbul-tr)
- [Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam sunrise & sunset](https://sunhour.app/sun-times/ho-chi-minh-city-vn)
- [Chengdu, China sunrise & sunset](https://sunhour.app/sun-times/chengdu-cn)
- [Mumbai, India sunrise & sunset](https://sunhour.app/sun-times/mumbai-in)
- [São Paulo, Brazil sunrise & sunset](https://sunhour.app/sun-times/sao-paulo-br)
- [Mexico City, Mexico sunrise & sunset](https://sunhour.app/sun-times/mexico-city-mx)
- [Tianjin, China sunrise & sunset](https://sunhour.app/sun-times/tianjin-cn)
- [Delhi, India sunrise & sunset](https://sunhour.app/sun-times/delhi-in)
- [Wuhan, China sunrise & sunset](https://sunhour.app/sun-times/wuhan-cn)
- [Seoul, South Korea sunrise & sunset](https://sunhour.app/sun-times/seoul-kr)
- [Tokyo, Japan sunrise & sunset](https://sunhour.app/sun-times/tokyo-jp)
- [Dongguan, China sunrise & sunset](https://sunhour.app/sun-times/dongguan-cn)
- [Cairo, Egypt sunrise & sunset](https://sunhour.app/sun-times/cairo-eg)
- [Xi’an, China sunrise & sunset](https://sunhour.app/sun-times/xi-an-cn)
- [Johannesburg, South Africa sunrise & sunset](https://sunhour.app/sun-times/johannesburg-za)
- [Nanjing, China sunrise & sunset](https://sunhour.app/sun-times/nanjing-cn)
- [Hangzhou, China sunrise & sunset](https://sunhour.app/sun-times/hangzhou-cn)
- [Foshan, China sunrise & sunset](https://sunhour.app/sun-times/foshan-cn)
- [London, United Kingdom sunrise & sunset](https://sunhour.app/sun-times/london-gb)
- [New York City, United States sunrise & sunset](https://sunhour.app/sun-times/new-york-city-us)
- [Jakarta, Indonesia sunrise & sunset](https://sunhour.app/sun-times/jakarta-id)
- [Bengaluru, India sunrise & sunset](https://sunhour.app/sun-times/bengaluru-in)
- [Hanoi, Vietnam sunrise & sunset](https://sunhour.app/sun-times/hanoi-vn)
- [Chongqing, China sunrise & sunset](https://sunhour.app/sun-times/chongqing-cn)
- [Wuzhong, China sunrise & sunset](https://sunhour.app/sun-times/wuzhong-cn)
- [Qingdao, China sunrise & sunset](https://sunhour.app/sun-times/qingdao-cn)

## Recent blog posts

- [Twilight explained: civil, nautical, and astronomical — and what each is for](https://sunhour.app/blog/twilight-explained-civil-nautical-astronomical) — Twilight is not one thing. There are three distinct phases after sunset, each with its own light and its own uses, from cityscape photography to stargazing. Here is what separates them.
- [The best time of day for landscape photography, season by season](https://sunhour.app/blog/best-time-of-day-landscape-photography-by-season) — Golden hour is the standard answer, but its timing and quality shift dramatically through the year. Here is how to plan landscape shoots across the seasons, from long summer light to brief, low winter sun.
- [Blue hour photography: how to shoot the best light after sunset](https://sunhour.app/blog/blue-hour-photography-guide) — The minutes after the sun disappears can be better than sunset itself. Here is what blue hour is, why it flatters cityscapes and water, the exposure challenges it brings, and how to plan for a window that lasts only minutes.
- [How to photograph the moon: timing, phases, and settings that work](https://sunhour.app/blog/how-to-photograph-the-moon) — The moon is bright, far away, and moves fast, which is why most moon photos come out as a tiny white blob. Here is how to plan the timing and phase, and the camera settings that actually capture detail.
- [Sunrise vs sunset photography: which light is actually better?](https://sunhour.app/blog/sunrise-vs-sunset-photography) — They look similar in a photo, but shooting at dawn and dusk are very different experiences with different light, crowds, and colour. Here is how to choose the right end of the day for the shot you want.
- [Golden hour photography: how to plan the perfect shoot using sun times](https://sunhour.app/blog/golden-hour-photography-planning-guide) — The best light of the day lasts minutes, not hours, and it moves with the season and your location. Here is how golden hour, blue hour and twilight actually work, and how to plan a shoot so you are in position before the light arrives.
- [Why the Magic Hour Is Marketing, and How It Differs From Golden Hour](https://sunhour.app/blog/magic-hour-vs-golden-hour) — The film industry called it magic hour; photographers called it golden hour; both meant slightly different things. Here is the actual distinction and why it matters.
- [Reading the Timeline Strip on Sunhour](https://sunhour.app/blog/reading-sunhour-timeline-strip) — The timeline strip is the single most useful feature of sunhour. Once you can read it at a glance, you stop needing to memorise sunrise tables.
- [The Maths Behind Sun Azimuth and Altitude, in Plain English](https://sunhour.app/blog/sun-azimuth-altitude-plain-english) — Two numbers — azimuth and altitude — completely describe where the sun is in the sky from your location. They are easier to understand than they sound.
- [Best Apps and Tools for Outdoor Photographers](https://sunhour.app/blog/best-apps-tools-outdoor-photographers) — After a few years of outdoor shooting, your phone ends up with a stack of niche apps. Here are the ones that actually earn their place on the home screen.
- [Polar Day and Polar Night: Why They Exist](https://sunhour.app/blog/polar-day-polar-night-explained) — Above 66.5 degrees the sun stops behaving. Polar day is weeks of unbroken sunlight; polar night is weeks where the sun never rises. Here is the geometry.
- [Sunset Time for Any City: Why It Varies Between Two Streets](https://sunhour.app/blog/sunset-time-varies-between-streets) — The official sunset time is for an idealised flat horizon at a single point. Real cities are not flat. Two friends in the same city can watch the sun set 18 minutes apart.
- [How Daylight Saving Time Wrecks Your Shoot Plan (And the Workaround)](https://sunhour.app/blog/daylight-saving-time-shoot-plan) — DST is a clock change, not a sun change. The sun keeps doing exactly what it was doing. The problem is that everything in your calendar is wrong by an hour.
- [Solar Noon and Why Outdoor Portraits Look Terrible Then](https://sunhour.app/blog/solar-noon-outdoor-portraits) — Shooting portraits outdoors at solar noon is one of the most common rookie mistakes. The reasons are simple geometry, and the workarounds are equally simple.
- [Wedding Ceremony Timing for Natural Light](https://sunhour.app/blog/wedding-ceremony-natural-light-timing) — If the venue is outdoor and the budget did not include a lighting kit, ceremony start time is the single most important photo decision. Pick wrong and the album is ugly.
- [Plants and Seasonal Sun: a Quick Gardener's Guide](https://sunhour.app/blog/plants-seasonal-sun-gardener-guide) — "Full sun" on a seed packet means six hours of direct light in midsummer. That number is a lie six months of the year. Here is how to read your garden's actual sun pattern.
- [Sunrise Meditation: Choosing Your Window](https://sunhour.app/blog/sunrise-meditation-window) — If you have decided to meditate at sunrise, the next question is which sunrise. The forty minutes around dawn contain three very different windows, each with a different feel.
- [Photographing the Northern Lights: When to Look](https://sunhour.app/blog/northern-lights-when-to-look) — Aurora photography is mostly a planning problem disguised as a photography problem. Get the timing right and the rest is straightforward.
- [Best Times for Landscape Photography by Season](https://sunhour.app/blog/landscape-photography-by-season) — Golden hour shifts more across the seasons than across the day. Here is what each season actually does to the light, and why it changes how you shoot.
- [Astrophotography Planning With Civil, Nautical and Astronomical Twilight](https://sunhour.app/blog/astrophotography-twilight-planning) — The three twilights are not bureaucratic labels — they tell you when astronomers can actually see stars. Here is how to use them to plan a night under the sky.

## Citation

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