You can obtain the times of sunrise, sunset, moonrise, moonset, transits of the Sun and Moon, and the beginning and end of civil twilight, along with information on the Moon's phase by specifying the date and location in one of the two forms below and clicking on the "Get data" button at the end of the form.

Use Form A for cities or towns in the U.S. or its territories.   Use Form B for all other locations. Both forms are immediately below.

Be sure to read the Notes section, located after the two forms, especially if you wish to use these data for legal purposes.

Form A - U.S. Cities or Towns

Year:      Month:   January February March April May June July August September October November December    Day:  

State or Territory:   Alabama Alaska American Samoa Arizona Arkansas California Colorado Connecticut Delaware District of Columbia Florida Georgia Guam Hawaii Idaho Illinois Indiana Iowa Kansas Kentucky Louisiana Maine Maryland Massachusetts Michigan Minnesota Mississippi Missouri Montana Nebraska Nevada New Hampshire New Jersey New Mexico New York North Carolina North Dakota N. Mariana Islands Ohio Oklahoma Oregon Pennsylvania Puerto Rico Rhode Island South Carolina South Dakota Tennessee Texas Utah Vermont Virgin Islands Virginia Washington West Virginia Wisconsin Wyoming

City or Town Name:  

The place name you enter above must be a city or town in the U.S. The place's location will be retrieved from a file with over 22,000 places listed. Either upper- or lower-case letters or a combination can be used. Spell out place name prefixes, as in "East Orange", "Fort Lauderdale", "Mount Vernon", etc. The only exception is "St.", which is entered as an abbreviation with a period, as in "St. Louis". You need only enter as many characters as will unambiguously identify the place.

Form B - Locations Worldwide

Year:      Month:   January February March April May June July August September October November December    Day:  

Place Name Label:  

The place name you enter above is merely a label for the table header; you can enter any identifier, or none (avoid using punctuation characters). The data will be calculated for the longitude and latitude you enter below.

Longitude:

east  west  degrees  minutes 

Latitude:

north  south  degrees  minutes 

Time Zone:

hours  east of Greenwich  west of Greenwich

Need coordinates?  Try NGA's GEOnet Names Server (GNS).
Need U.S. coordinates?  Try the USGS Geographic Names Information System (GNIS).
Need a time zone?  Try the time zone map.

For information on the definitions of terms used, see Rise, Set, and Twilight Definitions or Phases of the Moon and Percent of the Moon Illuminated in FAQ.

Please see Astronomical Data Used for Litigation if you are interested in using for legal purposes the data produced by this service.

If you need rise/set or twilight times for a series of dates for a U.S. location, use our rise/set table program, which computes a one-page table covering an entire year.

For U.S. cities or towns (Form A), the output times will be on a 12-hour clock (with "a.m." or "p.m." listed); for worldwide locations (Form B) the output times will be on a 24-hour clock.

For U.S. cities or towns (Form A), the times of the phenomena are presented in the standard time of the place requested, using the current time zone of the place. Standard time in time zones was introduced in the U.S. in 1883, but the time zone boundaries have evolved considerably since then, with places shifting from one zone to another. There is no attempt here to track such changes.

Daylight time is implemented only for U.S. cities or towns (Form A) and only for years 1967 and later, in accordance with the Uniform Time Act of 1966 and subsequent legislation. Daylight time is not used for places currently exempt from it.

At the bottom of the output page for U.S. cities or towns there is a link to the map-generating service of the U.S. Census Bureau. Clicking on this link will provide a map of the area surrounding the location for which astronomical data have been given. The large red dot in the middle of the map indicates the location for which the data were computed. The width of the map is 0.25 degrees of longitude, equivalent to 1 minute of time in rise/set phenomena. Except for some critical cases in Alaska, the map roughly indicates the area within which the computed astronomical data are valid.

For worldwide locations (Form B) that require it, the time zone can be entered in hours and a fraction. For example, for locations in India, the time zone may be entered as 5.5 hours east of Greenwich. The time zone field can accommodate up to five characters.

Sunset photo by Lu Rarogiewicz from Mt. Wilson, California.

Need other kinds of astronomical information? Start at our home page.

Back to . . .     top     Form A     Form B