Sunrise & Sunset Calendar: Monthly Sun Times

Monthly sunrise and sunset calendar for your location

A single sunrise time answers what happens today, but many real planning decisions need an entire month. The Sunrise & Sunset Calendar above calculates a daily sequence for your saved SpaceTracker.live observing location so you can compare sunrise, sunset, daylight duration and the end of astronomical twilight without opening thirty separate dates. This is useful for astronomy, photography, outdoor travel, satellite watching and anyone who wants to understand how quickly the season is changing. The same city can gain or lose several minutes of daylight from one week to the next, while locations at higher latitudes can change much faster. Because the table is location based, it is more useful than a generic month graphic that assumes one city or one time zone.

Look at several adjacent dates rather than assuming a constant daily shift. A sunset can move by a different number of minutes than sunrise, so the two columns deserve separate attention. The Day Length Calculator shows their combined daylight interval, while today’s Sun calculator provides the full twilight sequence for a selected day.

The calendar is intentionally connected to the main Sunrise & Sunset Today calculator. Use the monthly page to scan the pattern, then open the daily tool when you need the full set of civil, nautical and astronomical twilight values, solar noon and the Sun-path visualization. If your goal is night-sky observing, also compare the selected date with Moon Phase Calendar. A late sunset combined with a bright Moon can leave little useful dark time, while a New Moon near a date with early astronomical dusk can create a much better window for the Milky Way or faint constellations.

Why sunrise and sunset move through the month

The daily change comes from two pieces of geometry working together: Earth is tilted on its axis and Earth is moving around the Sun. The axial tilt changes the Sun’s apparent declination during the year, so the path the Sun follows across your local sky becomes higher or lower and longer or shorter. Close to an equinox, the Sun’s declination changes relatively quickly and many locations notice a steady shift in sunrise and sunset from day to day. Around a solstice, the change can slow and the times may appear to pause before reversing direction. The exact pattern also depends on latitude. Near the equator, daylight stays comparatively close to twelve hours through the year; farther north or south, seasonal differences become much larger.

The diagram isolates the role of tilt: Earth’s hemispheres receive different seasonal daylight as its axis maintains roughly the same orientation during its orbit. It is a teaching sketch, not a scale model of orbital distance. The equinox and solstice calendar gives the seasonal milestones; NASA’s Earth overview gives the physical context.

Longitude matters too. Two places in the same official time zone can have noticeably different sunrise and sunset clock times because one is farther east or west. Time-zone rules and daylight-saving policies then affect what appears on the clock, while the astronomical geometry itself is continuous. That is why the calendar should be read as a local observing tool rather than a universal schedule. If you travel, update the saved location and make sure your device clock and time zone reflect where you are actually observing.

Use day length to plan astronomy and satellite viewing

Day length is the interval from calculated sunrise to calculated sunset. For astronomy, however, darkness does not begin immediately at sunset. Civil, nautical and astronomical twilight continue while the Sun moves farther below the horizon. The monthly table therefore includes astronomical dusk as a useful marker for the start of the darker night-sky period. If you are planning a faint target, move from this calendar to Best Time to Stargaze Tonight, where Moonlight and weather can be considered alongside darkness. For bright planets, complete darkness may not be necessary; Planets Visible Tonight can be useful during twilight.

Satellite observers should interpret the table differently. The most attractive visual passes often happen when the observer is already in twilight or darkness while a spacecraft at altitude still receives sunlight. That makes the periods around sunset and sunrise especially important. After identifying suitable dates in this calendar, check ISS Visible Tonight or the satellite pass tools to see whether a pass actually occurs during the useful illumination geometry. A sunrise calendar by itself cannot predict a satellite pass, but it supplies one of the key environmental conditions that determines whether the pass may be visually bright.

Why calculated times can differ from what you see outside

Published sunrise and sunset times use standard astronomical conventions, including a conventional apparent altitude for the upper edge of the Sun and a standard allowance for atmospheric refraction. Your real horizon may be very different. A mountain ridge, city skyline, forest or nearby building can hide the Sun for several minutes after the calculated sunrise, while an elevated viewpoint can reveal sunlight earlier. Temperature and pressure also change atmospheric refraction slightly. For that reason, the calendar is best used as a consistent planning reference rather than a promise that the first visible ray will appear at an exact second from every street or balcony.

The U.S. Naval Observatory Astronomical Applications services are an authoritative reference for rise, set and twilight concepts. SpaceTracker.live uses the monthly view to turn those concepts into a practical workflow: scan the dates, compare daylight and darkness, then move into the appropriate live Moon, sky or satellite tool. If you want to understand the shape of the Sun’s daily arc rather than only the clock times, open Sun Position Today and view altitude, azimuth and the Sun path for your location.