How to find sunrise and sunset times
- Press My location, pick a city, or type a latitude and longitude in any format: 51.5074, -0.1278 or 51°30′N 0°08′W. Your location stays in your browser.
- Choose the date and the time zone to show the times in. Picking a city sets its zone; for typed coordinates, choose the place’s own zone.
- Read sunrise, sunset, solar noon and day length, then the twilight and golden hour table and the times for the next seven days.
Why sunrise and sunset change through the year
The Earth’s axis is tilted by about 23.4°, so for half the year your hemisphere leans towards the Sun and days are longer. The change is fastest around the equinoxes in March and September, when day length in London grows or shrinks by almost 4 minutes a day, and slowest around the solstices.
The earliest sunset doesn’t fall on the shortest day. Because the Earth’s orbit is an ellipse and its axis is tilted, solar noon drifts during the year (the equation of time), so in the northern hemisphere the earliest sunset comes a week or two before the December solstice and the latest sunrise a week or two after it.
Solar noon
Solar noon is when the Sun is highest in the sky and due south (or north, in the southern hemisphere). It is rarely 12:00 on the clock: time zones are wide, daylight saving shifts clocks by an hour, and the equation of time moves solar noon by up to about 16 minutes either way.