This tool tells you the compass direction of sunrise and sunset for any date and place on Earth. Landscape, architecture, and travel photographers use it to pre-visualise where the sun will break the horizon and to align a composition with golden-hour light before they ever arrive on location.
How it works
The calculation has two parts: the sun’s declination for the date, and the azimuth of the sun when it sits on the horizon at that declination and latitude.
A compact, planning-grade declination model is:
N = day of year (Jan 1 = 1)
delta = -23.44 * cos( 360/365 * (N + 10) ) (degrees)This puts the winter solstice near -23.44 and the summer solstice near +23.44,
matching the real tilt of Earth’s axis.
The azimuth of the sun at a level horizon (altitude = 0) comes from the standard spherical-astronomy relation:
cos(A) = sin(delta) / cos(latitude)A is the azimuth of sunrise measured from true north. Sunset is the
mirror image: 360 - A. The formula assumes a flat, unobstructed horizon at sea
level.
Worked example
In London (lat ~51.5 degrees N) at the June solstice, declination is about +23.4.
Then cos(A) = sin(23.4) / cos(51.5) = 0.397 / 0.623 = 0.638, giving
A ~= 50.4 degrees — a sunrise in the north-east, with sunset mirrored at
about 309.6 degrees in the north-west. At the December solstice the bearings
swing the opposite way, with the sun rising well south of east.
Notes and limits
- Positive latitude is north, negative is south. Positive longitude is east.
- Results are for a sea-level horizon. Mountains or buildings raise the visible horizon and shift the apparent rise point.
- Atmospheric refraction lifts the sun by roughly half a degree at the horizon, which is ignored here; the planning bearing is still accurate to about a degree.
- All computation happens locally in your browser — no location data is uploaded.