Golden Hour Calculator

New York, United States
Morning Golden Hour05:25 – 06:06
Evening Golden Hour19:43 – 20:24
Morning Blue Hour04:52 – 05:05
Evening Blue Hour20:44 – 20:57

Golden Hour & Blue Hour

Golden hour is the window when the sun is low — between -0.833° (the standard sunrise and sunset threshold) and +6° elevation — giving soft, warm, directional light that's ideal for portrait and landscape photography.

Blue hour sits just outside golden hour, with the sun between -6° and -4° below the horizon. The sky takes on a deep saturated blue with long, cool tonal gradients — see also twilight for the wider civil/nautical/astronomical definitions.

At high latitudes in summer the sun may stay below +6° all day — in that case both morning and evening golden hour are reported as "does not occur today", and you can treat the entire day as soft-light hours.