About this page
The sky, kept in real time. The page shows today’s civil dawn, sunrise, sunset, civil dusk and day length, and its background follows the sun’s altitude, so it always wears the color of the hour. It opens on the sky where your clock says you are—the time zone the browser already reports, never a location permission—and any of the cities beneath the times is one click away.
Questions
What is civil twilight?
The stretch when the sun sits less than six degrees below the horizon—civil dawn before sunrise, civil dusk after sunset. There is usually enough light to read outside, and it is the boundary many countries use for headlights and flight rules.
How accurate are the times?
They are computed with a standard almanac algorithm and usually land within a minute or two of published tables. Horizon, altitude and unusual atmospheric refraction can shift the real moment slightly.
Whose sky is this?
Yours, as closely as a page may guess without asking. Your browser reports the time zone your clock is set to, and the page looks that zone up among the 77 places below—a zone for each, from Honolulu to Auckland. When it finds one, the times are worked out from that city’s own coordinates, exactly as if you had picked it by hand. This is the same reading the rest of the site makes when its pages follow the sky.
And if my zone is not one of them?
Then the page keeps your clock but not your latitude: it uses a nominal point on the equator at your UTC offset, which puts dawn near six and sunset near six on your own time. The color of the hour stays close; the times are indicative, and the line under the numerals says so. Pick the nearest city below for exact ones.
Can I choose a city myself?
Pick one from the row beneath the times—nine of them stand there—or add ?city= to the address, e.g. /twilight/?city=london. Your choice overrides the time zone, and the times come from that city’s fixed coordinates, shown in its own zone.
All 77 places the page knows
İstanbul ·
Ankara ·
İzmir ·
London ·
Dublin ·
Lisbon ·
Madrid ·
Paris ·
Brussels ·
Amsterdam ·
Berlin ·
Zürich ·
Rome ·
Vienna ·
Prague ·
Budapest ·
Warsaw ·
Belgrade ·
Sofia ·
Bucharest ·
Athens ·
Copenhagen ·
Oslo ·
Stockholm ·
Helsinki ·
Kyiv ·
Moscow ·
Jerusalem ·
Beirut ·
Baghdad ·
Tehran ·
Baku ·
Tbilisi ·
Dubai ·
Riyadh ·
Doha ·
Cairo ·
Casablanca ·
Lagos ·
Nairobi ·
Johannesburg ·
Karachi ·
Delhi ·
Dhaka ·
Bangkok ·
Ho Chi Minh City ·
Jakarta ·
Singapore ·
Kuala Lumpur ·
Manila ·
Hong Kong ·
Shanghai ·
Taipei ·
Seoul ·
Tokyo ·
Perth ·
Brisbane ·
Adelaide ·
Melbourne ·
Sydney ·
Auckland ·
Honolulu ·
Anchorage ·
Vancouver ·
Los Angeles ·
Phoenix ·
Denver ·
Mexico City ·
Chicago ·
New York ·
Toronto ·
Halifax ·
Bogotá ·
Lima ·
Santiago ·
Buenos Aires ·
São Paulo
Why does the page change color?
The background follows the sun’s altitude for the place under the numerals—deep night blue through dawn amber into daylight—recomputed every half minute, so the page always wears the color of the hour.
More instruments: the sun’s height and direction, the stars above your horizon and the phase of the moon—or see all of them. From the writing: The Cove. Or search the site.