Golden Hour & Blue Hour
Morning and evening golden hour and blue hour for any place and date from the Sun’s elevation — NOAA solar equations, the elevation bands as inputs.
When golden hour and blue hour start and end in the morning and the evening, how long each lasts, solar noon and the Sun’s height at noon — for your latitude, longitude, date and UTC offset.
Example: London on 21 June 2026 (UTC+1): evening golden hour 20:27–21:50 and blue hour until 22:09; in Jakarta in late September each golden hour lasts about 40 minutes.
Elevation,
not clock hours.
Why golden and blue hour are bands of the Sun’s elevation, how their times are found, why they are longer far from the equator, and what the horizon does.
Bands of elevation
Golden hour is the light when the Sun is low — commonly taken as between 6° above and 4° below the horizon — and blue hour the deep twilight from 4° to 6° below. Neither is an hour: the page finds the times the Sun crosses each elevation, and the limits are inputs for those who draw them elsewhere.
The solar equations
The Sun’s declination and the equation of time come from the NOAA solar calculator equations, the same code the Sunrise, Sunset & Day Length page uses; the time the Sun stands at an elevation is solar noon ± four minutes per degree of the hour angle for a zenith of 90° minus that elevation. Accuracy is about a minute.
Latitude and season
Near the equator the Sun rises and sets steeply and golden hour lasts about forty minutes; at high latitudes in summer it slides along the horizon and golden light can last hours — or the Sun never climbs above 6° at all in winter. The page says when a band does not occur.
What the number does not settle
Clear-horizon figures: hills, buildings and cloud end the golden light earlier, and weather decides whether there is any. Inputs stay in your browser; the same anonymous usage counts as the rest of the site apply.
SOURCES
Last reviewed 24 September 2026. How results are checked: How we verify.