Guide
What is golden hour?
Golden hour is the stretch of time around sunrise and sunset when the sun sits low in the sky. Its light travels through more of the atmosphere, which scatters away the blue and leaves warm, soft, directional light: long shadows, glowing skin, and skies that shift from gold to pink.
How we define it
On GoldenHourly, golden hour is when the sun is between 6° above and 4° below the horizon. That includes the last few minutes before sunset and the first few after it, when the sky is still lit warm. Blue hour follows, from 4° to 6° below the horizon: the sun is gone, and the sky turns a deep, even blue.
Every morning runs the same sequence in reverse: blue hour, then golden hour, with sunrise in the middle of the gold.
Why it isn't always an hour
The name is loose. How long golden hour lasts depends on how steeply the sun crosses the horizon, and that depends on where you are and the time of year:
- Near the equator the sun rises and sets almost straight up and down, so it passes through the golden band quickly, in about 40 to 50 minutes.
- Farther from the equator the sun meets the horizon at a slant, so it takes longer: often over an hour in summer and winter.
- Near the poles it can last all day in winter, when the sun never climbs above 6°, or never happen in midsummer, when it never sinks low enough.
It's usually shortest around the equinoxes in March and September and longest near the solstices.
Which way to face
The sun doesn't set due west except at the equinoxes. In summer it sets well to the northwest (in the northern hemisphere), in winter to the southwest. Each city page shows the exact bearing, and the map on the home page draws where the sun sets and where shadows fall at any minute.
How the times are worked out
All the sun math runs in your browser using the open-source SunCalc library, for the exact coordinates of the place. Times are shown in that place's own time zone, so a plan you make for Lisbon reads in Lisbon time wherever you are. Mountains, buildings and haze aren't included, so treat the times as when the light is possible, not guaranteed.