When is magic hour in your area?

What is magic hour?

Magic hour is the short stretch around sunset and sunrise when the sun sits low or just below the horizon. It has two parts. Golden hour comes first in the evening: the sun is less than 6° above the horizon, the light is warm and soft and shadows run long. Blue hour follows from sunset until the sun is 6° below the horizon: the sky turns a deep, even blue but is still brighter than the ground, so street lights, windows and faces keep their detail instead of blowing out. In the morning the order is reversed. This page counts down to the next one at your location and shows exactly when each part begins and ends.

Golden hour vs blue hour

How long does magic hour last?

It depends on latitude and season. Near the equator the sun drops almost straight down, so golden and blue hour together are over in under 50 minutes. Around 30–40° latitude (Shanghai, Tokyo, Los Angeles, New York, Sydney) budget about an hour in the evening, a little more in midsummer: 30–45 minutes of golden light, then 25–35 minutes of blue. Around 50° (London, Berlin, Vancouver) a June evening stretches to about an hour and a half, and near the Arctic Circle in summer the light can hover for hours or never fully fade.

Why the time changes every day

Sunset moves a minute or two each day and swings by two hours or more between June and December at mid-latitudes. Longitude matters as well: on the western edge of a time zone the sun sets much later than on the eastern edge. A fixed clock time never works, which is why the countdown here is computed for the exact place you pick.

How this page calculates it

Times come from the NOAA solar-position algorithm evaluated at your coordinates and are usually within a minute of published sunrise and sunset tables. Golden hour is defined as the sun between 6° and −0.83° (the apparent horizon, allowing for refraction); blue hour as −0.83° to −6°, which is civil twilight. Cloud cover comes from Open-Meteo forecasts and is only a hint: thin cloud often makes the best colour, while heavy overcast shortens the blue hour.

Questions

When is magic hour today?

In the evening it begins when the sun is 6° above the horizon, usually 30–45 minutes before sunset, and ends when the sun is 6° below it, 25–35 minutes after sunset at mid-latitudes. The countdown at the top of this page shows today’s exact times for the place you choose. In the morning the same window runs in reverse around sunrise.

Does it work anywhere in the world?

Yes. Search any city or use your device’s location. Times are shown in that place’s local time, so it also works for planning a trip.

Is my location stored?

Only in your own browser, to remember your choice. Nothing is sent to a server except the coordinates inside the weather and calendar requests you trigger.

How do I get reminded on my phone?

Use “Subscribe in calendar”. It adds a rolling feed with one event per day and an alert at the lead time you choose. Browser notifications only work while the page is open on a desktop.

What do Chinese photographers mean by 带密度?

Literally “with density”. On film, a sky that recorded enough density prints as deep blue instead of blank white. It is the same window as the blue hour, and the Chinese version of this page uses that term.

Does weather matter?

A lot. Clear skies give a clean gradient, scattered cloud catches colour, and heavy overcast or rain mutes the golden part and makes the blue hour shorter and greyer. The 7-day list shows forecast cloud cover at sunset.