How Sun and Moon work

Summary

Sunrise and sunset, golden and blue hour, twilight, and moon phase for any location and date. Includes alarm scheduling for any future event.

How it works

An ephemeris for any place on Earth on any date. It tells you when the sun rises and sets, when golden and blue hour land, when twilight begins and ends, and what phase the moon is in. Use it to plan a landscape trip months ahead, to scout golden hour for tomorrow's portrait, or just to know which way the sun comes up on a foreign rooftop.

The two pills under the title

Top row is the location pill (full width). Tap it to open the location picker. Bottom row has the date on the left and a small stepper card on the right with two arrows that move the date back or forward by one day. If you have any alarms scheduled, a small primary-coloured bell bubble shows up at the right end of the date row with the alarm count; tap it to manage them.

Picking a location

Four ways: use your phone's GPS for your current spot, search by name (city, landmark, country), enter latitude and longitude by hand, or tap a saved favourite. The picker has a small toggle at the top that switches between Search and Coordinates so the dialog stays compact. Once a location is active, a button appears to save it as a favourite for next time. Favourites list X buttons to delete entries you no longer want.

Picking a date

Tap the date pill to open a calendar and pick any date, past or future. Quick chips inside the calendar jump to Today, Tomorrow, +1 week, +1 month. The two arrows next to the date pill step the date one day at a time without opening the calendar, useful for sweeping through a week to compare golden hour times.

Time zone

Times are shown in the location's local clock, not your phone's clock. Pick Tokyo, see Tokyo time. The phone's timezone is used for your current GPS location (so daylight saving is handled exactly). For locations picked by search, the country code from the geocoder maps to a real timezone for almost a hundred countries (Spain to Europe/Madrid, Japan to Asia/Tokyo, etc.) so DST is still correct. Manual coordinates trigger an automatic background lookup of the country, then upgrade the timezone the same way.

Sunrise and sunset

The geometric times when the sun crosses the horizon. The actual time you can shoot depends on hills, buildings, and atmospheric conditions, so the times are a starting point. Both rows are highlighted in the list because they are usually what you came for.

Golden hour

The hour or so just after sunrise and just before sunset when the sun is low and the light is warm and side-lit. The classic time for landscape and portrait. Both windows are flagged in the list.

Blue hour

The window after sunset and before sunrise when the sky is still bright but the sun is below the horizon. Cool, even illumination. Cityscapes love it.

Twilight

Three flavours, each a deeper level of dark. Civil twilight runs to 6 degrees below horizon (the horizon is still visible, ambient light is enough to read by). Nautical to 12 degrees (horizon is no longer visible, brighter stars appear). Astronomical to 18 degrees (full darkness, the Milky Way is visible from a dark site). The modal lists dawn and dusk for each.

Moon phase

How full the moon is on the chosen date. Useful for night photography: a full moon turns landscapes blue and crisp, a new moon gives the darkest sky for stars. The percentage shown is illumination, which is what you would see from earth, not the day-of-cycle number.

Polar regions

Above latitude 66.5 degrees in summer or winter, the sun does not rise or set on some dates (midnight sun, polar night). The modal handles this gracefully: it skips the missing rows and shows a notice telling you which case you are in. Solar noon and the moon are still computed.

Alarms

Tap the bell icon next to any future event to schedule a phone alarm at that time, with an optional pre-event buffer (no buffer, 30 min, custom). The bell glows green for events you have set. The alarm fires at the absolute moment of that event, so for distant locations be aware that the alarm rings when the event actually happens at that location, which may be the middle of your night.