Sun Position API — sunrise, sunset & golden hour times

Sun position API — sunrise, sunset, golden hour and twilight times

Sun Position API computes sunrise, sunset, solar noon, day length, golden hour, blue hour and civil, nautical and astronomical twilight times, plus the sun's elevation and azimuth, for any list of locations and dates. Every time is given in each location's local time zone, which is looked up from its coordinates. You get one row per location and date, or one row per location and time when you set a step in minutes. It is built for photographers planning golden hour and blue hour shoots, solar engineers and architects studying sun angles and shading, agriculture teams tracking day length, and app developers who need sun times in bulk without running their own calculations. To try it, press Start: the prefilled Greenwich Observatory example returns its result in seconds.

How to get sunrise, sunset and golden hour times

1. Add your places to Locations as a JSON list. Each location needs a latitude and a longitude, and can have a name.
2. Set Start date, and optionally End date to compute a range of local calendar dates.
3. Optionally set Step (minutes) to get the sun elevation and sun azimuth through each day, for example every 15 minutes.
4. Optionally set Time zone to use one IANA time zone for every location instead of each location's own local time zone.
5. Press Start and wait for the run to finish.
6. Open the Output tab to view the rows, then download them as JSON, CSV, Excel, XML or HTML.
7. To automate it, call the actor through the Apify API, or connect it to Make, Zapier, Google Sheets or a webhook with Apify integrations.

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
locations	array of objects	none (required)	The places to compute sun times and sun positions for. Each has a latitude (-90 to 90), a longitude (-180 to 180, east positive) and an optional name. Up to 1,000 locations.
startDate	string	none (required)	The first local calendar date to compute, as YYYY-MM-DD.
endDate	string	the start date	The last local calendar date to compute, as YYYY-MM-DD, at most 366 days after the start date counting both.
stepMinutes	integer	none	When set (1 to 1440), returns one row per location for every step through each local day, with the sun's elevation and azimuth at that time. Leave empty for one row per location per date.
timeZone	string	looked up per location	An IANA time zone name such as Europe/London, used for every location instead of the zone looked up from its coordinates.

Example input (the prefilled values):

{
  "locations": [{ "name": "Greenwich Observatory", "latitude": 51.4769, "longitude": -0.0005 }],
  "startDate": "2026-06-21"
}

Output

Each dataset item is one location and local date (a once-per-day row), or one location and time when Step (minutes) is set. A sun event that does not happen on the date is null.

Example row for the prefilled input. On the June solstice the sun never sinks 18° below the horizon at Greenwich, so astronomical twilight is null:

{
  "id": "51.4769,-0.0005,2026-06-21",
  "name": "Greenwich Observatory",
  "latitude": 51.4769,
  "longitude": -0.0005,
  "timeZone": "Europe/London",
  "date": "2026-06-21",
  "time": null,
  "elevation": null,
  "azimuth": null,
  "polar": null,
  "sunrise": "2026-06-21T04:43:59+01:00",
  "sunset": "2026-06-21T21:22:01+01:00",
  "solarNoon": "2026-06-21T13:03:00+01:00",
  "dayLengthMinutes": 998.03,
  "civilDawn": "2026-06-21T03:56:17+01:00",
  "civilDusk": "2026-06-21T22:09:43+01:00",
  "nauticalDawn": "2026-06-21T02:41:50+01:00",
  "nauticalDusk": "2026-06-21T23:24:10+01:00",
  "astronomicalDawn": null,
  "astronomicalDusk": null,
  "goldenHourMorningStart": "2026-06-21T04:15:45+01:00",
  "goldenHourMorningEnd": "2026-06-21T05:38:11+01:00",
  "goldenHourEveningStart": "2026-06-21T20:27:49+01:00",
  "goldenHourEveningEnd": "2026-06-21T21:50:14+01:00",
  "blueHourMorningStart": "2026-06-21T03:56:17+01:00",
  "blueHourMorningEnd": "2026-06-21T04:15:45+01:00",
  "blueHourEveningStart": "2026-06-21T21:50:14+01:00",
  "blueHourEveningEnd": "2026-06-21T22:09:43+01:00"
}

All times are local time in the location's time zone, as ISO 8601 with that zone's offset.

Field	Type	Description
id	string	Stable row ID: <latitude>,<longitude>,<date>, plus ,<UTC instant> for a row at a specific time. It stays the same across runs.
name	string or null	The location's name as given in the input.
latitude	number	The location's latitude in decimal degrees (north positive).
longitude	number	The location's longitude in decimal degrees (east positive).
timeZone	string	The location's IANA time zone, for example Europe/London.
date	string	The local calendar date, YYYY-MM-DD. All sun events in the row happen on this date.
time	string or null	The instant the sun elevation and sun azimuth are computed for. Null for a once-per-day row.
elevation	number or null	Sun elevation above the horizon in degrees (negative below it), geometric, without atmospheric refraction. Null when time is null.
azimuth	number or null	Sun azimuth in degrees clockwise from true north (0 to 360). Null when time is null.
polar	string or null	Polar day or night: day when the sun never sets on the date, night when it never rises, otherwise null.
sunrise	string or null	When the sun's upper edge rises above the horizon.
sunset	string or null	When the sun's upper edge sets below the horizon.
solarNoon	string or null	When the sun is highest in the sky.
dayLengthMinutes	number	Minutes from sunrise to sunset; 1440 in polar day and 0 in polar night.
civilDawn	string or null	Civil twilight begins: the sun's center rises to 6° below the horizon.
civilDusk	string or null	Civil twilight ends: the sun's center sets to 6° below the horizon.
nauticalDawn	string or null	Nautical twilight begins: the sun rises to 12° below the horizon.
nauticalDusk	string or null	Nautical twilight ends: the sun sets to 12° below the horizon.
astronomicalDawn	string or null	Astronomical twilight begins: the sun rises to 18° below the horizon.
astronomicalDusk	string or null	Astronomical twilight ends: the sun sets to 18° below the horizon.
goldenHourMorningStart	string or null	Morning golden hour starts: the sun rises to 4° below the horizon.
goldenHourMorningEnd	string or null	Morning golden hour ends: the sun rises to 6° above the horizon.
goldenHourEveningStart	string or null	Evening golden hour starts: the sun sets to 6° above the horizon.
goldenHourEveningEnd	string or null	Evening golden hour ends: the sun sets to 4° below the horizon.
blueHourMorningStart	string or null	Morning blue hour starts: the sun rises to 6° below the horizon.
blueHourMorningEnd	string or null	Morning blue hour ends: the sun rises to 4° below the horizon.
blueHourEveningStart	string or null	Evening blue hour starts: the sun sets to 4° below the horizon.
blueHourEveningEnd	string or null	Evening blue hour ends: the sun sets to 6° below the horizon.

The run also saves a short summary in the Run summary output.

Pricing

This actor uses pay-per-event pricing: you pay for each sun data row delivered to your dataset, and nothing for pages or requests.

How much does it cost to get 1,000 results?

$0.50 per 1,000 sun data rows ($0.0005 per row), lower on paid Apify plans.

• You're charged only for rows delivered to your dataset.
• The run stops when it reaches your maximum charge per run setting, so you never pay more than you set.
• Apify adds a small fee for each run start.

For example, one location for a full year of dates is 365 rows, about $0.18. One location every 15 minutes for a typical 24-hour day is 96 rows, about $0.05.

Limits & accuracy

• Up to 1,000 locations, 366 days and 1,000,000 rows per run. A larger input is rejected before any row is computed.
• Sun elevation and sun azimuth are within about half a degree of NOAA's solar calculator when the sun is more than 5° above the horizon.
• Sun elevation is geometric: no atmospheric refraction is applied, so near the horizon it reads a little lower than what you see.
• In polar day or polar night, polar is day or night and sunrise and sunset are null.

Compliance & licences

• All results are computed. No website or API is contacted at run time, and no personal data is collected.
• Sun times and positions use the suncalc library, BSD-2-Clause licence, Copyright (c) 2014, Vladimir Agafonkin.
• Time zones are looked up offline with the tz-lookup library, released under CC0 1.0 by The Dark Sky Company, LLC. This licence covers the library itself.
• The time zone boundary data inside tz-lookup is sourced from Evan Siroky's timezone-boundary-builder, which is built from OpenStreetMap. That upstream project's own README ("Licenses" section) states that its output data is licensed under the Open Data Commons Open Database License (ODbL). Time zone boundary data © OpenStreetMap contributors.

FAQ

Is it legal to use this sun data?

The actor collects nothing from any website: every sunrise, sunset and sun position is calculated from astronomy formulas, and no personal data is involved. You are still responsible for how you use the data; if you are unsure, ask a lawyer about your use case.

Which time zone are the times in?

Each location's local time zone, looked up from its coordinates. A point at sea gets a fixed-offset zone such as Etc/GMT+3. Set Time zone to use one zone for every location.

Why are some golden hour or twilight times null?

Near the poles, or near midsummer at high latitudes, the sun may never reach that angle on the date. The field is then null rather than a guess.

Where can I report an issue or request a feature?

Open the Issues tab on this actor's page and describe the input and what you expected.