Conditions on this page are recalculated from the latest forecast every time it is opened, for the current date in the location's own time zone.
Golden hour is the window when the sun sits between roughly 6° above and 4° below the horizon, giving warm, low-angle light with long shadows. Its length depends entirely on latitude and season: minutes near the equator, hours in a Nordic summer. Pick a destination below for today's exact morning and evening windows. Each city page adds the part most calculators skip — a photography score that weights cloud fraction, haze, wind and precipitation against the timing, so you get a go/wait/skip verdict instead of just two timestamps.
Golden hour is a solar-elevation window, not a fixed 60 minutes. Near the equator the sun crosses the horizon almost vertically and the window can close in under 25 minutes. At 60° latitude in June the same elevation band can stay open for well over two hours. Each destination page solves the sun's elevation minute by minute for that exact coordinate, so the window length is real rather than an average.
A completely cloudless sky often produces flat, colourless sunsets, because there is nothing to catch the low-angle light. The strongest colour usually comes from 30–60% mid or high cloud with a clear band at the horizon for the sun to shine through underneath. That is why every city page pairs the timing with a cloud, haze and precipitation forecast for the specific window, and turns it into a go, wait or skip verdict.
Pick a destination below. Each page lists the morning and evening golden hour windows for today in local time, plus blue hour, calculated from the sun's elevation at that exact location.
Morning light is usually cleaner because the air has settled overnight and haze and convective cloud have not built yet. Evening light is warmer and often more colourful. Each city page scores both windows for today so you can compare directly.
Golden hour is when the sun sits roughly between 6° above and 4° below the horizon, giving warm directional light. Blue hour follows, with the sun 4–8° below the horizon, giving even, cool ambient light that balances well with artificial lighting.
Scores are capped by dealbreakers — heavy rain, dangerous wind, thick fog or hazardous UV pull a day down no matter how pleasant the rest of the numbers look. Forecast data is Open-Meteo; solar and lunar values are computed for this location's own coordinates and time zone. Full details on the methodology page.