Golden Hour / Sun Position Calculator

Knowledge Base

How to Use This for Shoot Planning

Golden hour (soft, warm, low-angle light) and blue hour (the deep blue afterglow following sunset) are the two most valuable natural lighting windows in filmmaking, and both are short. Plan your shot list around these exact windows rather than a vague "late afternoon" especially for anything where matching light across multiple takes matters.

What Counts as Golden Hour and Blue Hour

This tool defines golden hour as the period while the sun's elevation is between +6° and -4° (a widely used photographic convention), and blue hour as the period from -4° to -6° elevation, immediately following. Both morning and evening have their own golden/blue hour windows, mirrored around solar noon and sunset/sunrise respectively.

Accuracy Notes

This calculator uses the standard NOAA/Meeus solar position formulas (the same equations behind NOAA's own public solar calculator), accurate to about a minute for sunrise/sunset timing. The one thing it can't do automatically is time zone and daylight saving rules, enter your correct UTC offset for the specific date, which may differ across the year for the same location.

FAQ

Q: Why does day length come out slightly over 12 hours at the equinox?
A: That's correct, not a bug, atmospheric refraction bends light slightly, and sunrise/sunset are defined by the sun's upper edge crossing the horizon, both of which make the actual day very slightly longer than exactly 12 hours everywhere on Earth at the equinox.

Q: Does latitude affect how long golden hour lasts?
A: Significantly: near the equator the sun drops almost straight down, making golden hour short and consistent year-round. Near the poles in summer, the sun's path is much shallower, stretching golden hour dramatically or even lasting all "night."

Planning a shoot around the sun

Golden hour is the period after sunrise and before sunset when the sun sits low enough that light travels through more atmosphere, arriving warm, soft and strongly directional. It is not an hour. Near the equator it can be twenty minutes, and at high latitudes in summer it stretches for a considerable part of the evening.

Blue hour follows sunset and precedes sunrise, when the sun is below the horizon and the sky provides soft, cool, shadowless light. It is shorter than golden hour and changes fast, so anything shot in it needs to be planned to the minute rather than approached casually.

Sun position matters as much as timing. Knowing that the sun sets at eight tells you nothing about whether a building will be in shadow, and the bearing tells you exactly that. Checking direction as well as time is what prevents arriving at the right moment to find your location facing the wrong way.

Seasonal variation is larger than people expect away from the tropics. The bearing of sunset can shift by tens of degrees between summer and winter, so a location scouted in June behaves differently in December at the same clock time. Scout with the shooting date's sun position rather than the day you happened to visit.

Build a schedule backwards from the light. Golden hour is short and cannot be moved, so the shot depending on it gets scheduled first and everything else fits around it. Productions that shoot in script order and hope to reach the exterior in time routinely lose it, which is the most avoidable way to lose a day.

Vocabulary

Golden hour. The period shortly after sunrise and before sunset when low sun produces warm, soft, directional light. Its length varies with latitude and season, and it is frequently much shorter than an hour.

Blue hour. The period when the sun is below the horizon but the sky is still lit, giving soft, cool, shadowless light. Shorter than golden hour and changing quickly, so it needs precise planning.

Azimuth. The compass bearing of the sun, describing which direction it sits in rather than how high. Determines what is lit and what falls into shadow at a given location.

Elevation. The sun's height above the horizon in degrees. Low elevation produces long shadows and warm light, and high elevation produces short shadows and harsher, more neutral light.