Golden Hour Duration Calculator
Golden hour and blue hour duration for any latitude and month, from solar geometry.
About 25 minutes at the equator, and hours at high latitude in winter.
Golden hour is the period shortly after sunrise and before sunset when the sun is low on the horizon, casting warm, soft, directional light that photographers prize above all other natural lighting conditions. How long it lasts, and how much it varies, decides whether you get one frame or twenty.
What Makes Golden Hour Light Special?
When the sun is near the horizon, its light travels through a much thicker layer of atmosphere than at midday. This has several effects:
- Warm color: The atmosphere scatters blue light away, leaving the red, orange, and yellow wavelengths, giving the characteristic warm golden glow.
- Soft, diffused light: More atmospheric scattering also softens hard shadows compared to midday sun.
- Long shadows: The low angle of the sun casts long shadows that add depth and texture to landscapes and portraits.
- Low contrast: The dynamic range between highlights and shadows is much more manageable for cameras.
How Long Does Golden Hour Last?
Golden hour is the period when the sun’s altitude is between 0° and 6° above the horizon. That is 6° of vertical travel, and the only question is how fast the sun climbs through it.
The sun always moves at 15° of hour angle per hour, but almost none of that is vertical. The vertical component is what counts:
altitude rate = 15°/hr × cos(latitude) × cos(declination) × sin(sunset hour angle)
So the calculator solves the standard altitude equation twice, once for 0° and once for 6°, and takes the difference in hour angle:
sin(altitude) = sin(lat)·sin(dec) + cos(lat)·cos(dec)·cos(H)
That is exact rather than a rule of thumb, which matters at high latitude where the sun’s path bends so far from vertical that a linear estimate drifts badly.
Two things drive the answer:
- Latitude. Near the equator the sun rises almost straight up, so golden hour is 24 to 26 minutes all year. Move north or south and the path tilts, stretching the window.
- Season, but not the way most people assume. The longest golden hours at high latitude are in winter, not summer. At 60°N in mid-December the sun peaks at about 6.6° and crawls, so of a five-and-a-half-hour day, close to four hours are golden. In June at the same spot the sun climbs higher and faster and golden hour is barely over an hour. Shooting Norway in summer for the light is the wrong season, which is not what most workshops tell you.
Golden Hour Duration by Latitude (one session, sunrise or sunset)
| Latitude | March | June | December |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0° (equator) | 24 min | 26 min | 26 min |
| 15°N | 25 min | 27 min | 27 min |
| 30°N | 28 min | 31 min | 32 min |
| 45°N | 34 min | 39 min | 43 min |
| 60°N | 49 min | 1 h 8 min | 1 h 56 min |
| 66.5°N (Arctic Circle) | 1 h 2 min | 2 h 33 min | the whole 55-minute day |
| 70°N | 1 h 13 min | midnight sun | polar night |
Every figure there was read straight out of the calculator, so pick any row and you can check it yourself. Southern latitudes are the same numbers with June and December swapped.
Blue Hour
Blue hour is the sun between 6° and 12° below the horizon: cool, diffused light that suits cityscapes and architecture. It is also 6° of travel, so at any given place it runs very close to the same length as golden hour. The calculator works it out the same way rather than applying a fudge factor.
Above about 60° in midsummer the sun never gets 12° down at all. There is no blue hour then, and no astronomical darkness either. That is what the Scandinavians mean by white nights.
How we build and check this calculator
This calculator runs entirely in your browser, so the numbers you enter stay on your device. The math behind it is written by hand and tested against worked examples and standard references before the page goes live.
SuperGlobalCalculator is independently built and maintained. See how we build and verify our calculators.