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About this tool
Calculate precise golden hour, blue hour, sunrise, sunset and twilight windows for any date and place, with the sun's path across the day.
The Golden Hour Time Estimator calculates the exact clock times when the Sun sits between 6° above and 4° below the horizon — the golden hour — plus blue hour, sunrise, sunset, solar noon and all three twilights, for any date, latitude and longitude. It uses the NOAA Solar Calculator equations, which are accurate to about one minute between 72°N and 72°S, and shows the Sun's elevation across the whole day so you can see how quickly the light will change. It is made for photographers, videographers and drone pilots planning a shoot.
Open Golden Hour Time Estimator on AltFTool — it loads instantly in your browser.
Choose a place from the Location preset list (New Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, London, New York, Sydney, Reykjavik or Custom coordinates), then set Date, UTC offset (hours), Latitude (°, north positive) and Longitude (°, east positive) — or press Use my location to fill the coordinates from the browser. Editing any coordinate switches the preset to Custom coordinates on its own.
There is no calculate button: every figure recomputes as you type. The headline reads Evening golden hour starts, with the time, how long it lasts and when it ends, and the table below lists Morning blue hour, Morning golden hour, Sunrise, Solar noon, Sunset, Evening golden hour, Evening blue hour, Civil twilight (dawn / dusk), Nautical twilight (dawn / dusk), Astronomical twilight (dawn / dusk), Day length, Solar declination and Equation of time. Sun elevation across the day charts the Sun's height sampled every 20 minutes with the golden-hour band shaded.
Copy times puts the date, coordinates, UTC offset, both blue hours, both golden hours with their durations, sunrise, solar noon, sunset and day length on the clipboard, and the button reads Copied! for a moment. Reset returns the form to today's date, your browser's own UTC offset and the New Delhi, India preset.
NOAA equations, cross-checked against a full ephemeris to within a minute.
Golden hour, blue hour, and civil, nautical and astronomical twilight in one table.
Above the Arctic and Antarctic circles it says the Sun never crosses, instead of inventing a time.
It is the period when the Sun's centre is between 6° above and 4° below the horizon, giving warm, low-contrast light. It is rarely a full hour: near the equator it can be under 50 minutes, while in London in midwinter it stretches to about 1 hour 27 minutes because the Sun climbs at a shallower angle.
Blue hour is when the Sun is between 4° and 6° below the horizon — after golden hour in the evening and before it in the morning. It typically lasts 20-40 minutes at mid latitudes and ends at civil twilight, the -6° mark.
It depends on latitude and season, because the duration is set by how steeply the Sun crosses the horizon. Near the equator expect roughly 45-60 minutes; at 51°N in December it is nearly 90 minutes; inside the polar circles in midsummer the Sun may never drop to 4° below the horizon at all.
Most apps quote sunrise and sunset for a flat sea-level horizon with 0.833° of refraction and solar radius applied, which is what this tool does too, so times normally agree within a minute. Real terrain — hills, tall buildings, or standing on a beach versus a rooftop — moves the visible sunset by several minutes.