🌅 Sunrise, Sunset & Twilight Times Scraper

🚀 Export solar event times for any coordinate, any date, anywhere on Earth. Pull sunrise, sunset, solar noon, day length, civil/nautical/astronomical twilight, and golden hour in one call. Bulk-query thousands of cities and dates per run. No API key, no registration, no manual JSON wrangling.

🕒 Last updated: 2026-05-22 · 📊 21 fields per record · 🌍 worldwide coverage · 📅 any past or future date · 🌗 polar day/night detection

The Sunrise Sunset Times Scraper queries the Sunrise Sunset Times feed and returns 21 structured fields per record, including the geodetic location, the date, all solar event times, day-length in seconds and human-readable form, both twilight bands, and golden-hour start and end. Polar-day and polar-night locations are detected and flagged automatically.

The output covers every land and ocean coordinate, every date past or future, and every twilight band photographers and astronomers care about. This Actor delivers the data as CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML in seconds. All computations happen server-side, so you skip ephemeris-math entirely.

🎯 Target Audience	💡 Primary Use Cases
Photographers, drone pilots, agriculture analysts, solar-energy modelers, astronomy hobbyists, outdoor activity apps, smart-lighting controllers	Golden-hour planning, dawn/dusk drone restrictions, panel-orientation modeling, sky-watching schedules, lighting-automation triggers

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📋 What the Sunrise Sunset Times Scraper does

Three workflows in a single run:

• 📍 Per-coordinate solar event lookup. Sunrise, sunset, solar noon for any latitude and longitude.
• 📅 Multi-date bulk export. Pass a list of dates to chart seasonal day-length curves.
• 🌗 Twilight + golden-hour computation. Civil, nautical, astronomical twilights plus golden hour morning end and golden hour evening begin.

Each record includes the location label, lat/lon, date, IANA timezone of the response, polar-condition flag, every solar event, and day length in seconds and human-readable form.

💡 Why it matters: sunrise and twilight times shape photography workflows, drone-flight legality, solar-panel modeling, and outdoor-event scheduling. Computing them locally requires an ephemeris library and careful UTC/local conversion. This Actor returns ready-to-use times in seconds.

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🎬 Full Demo

🚧 Coming soon: a 3-minute walkthrough showing how to go from sign-up to a downloaded dataset.

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⚙️ Input

Input	Type	Default	Behavior
coordinates	object[]	[{"name":"New York City","lat":40.7128,"lng":-74.0060}]	List of locations. Each entry: { name, lat, lng }. Name is optional.
dates	string[]	[]	List of YYYY-MM-DD dates. Empty = today (UTC).
timeFormat	string	"iso"	iso (ISO 8601 UTC) or human (12-hour readable).
maxItems	integer	10	Records to return. Free plan caps at 10, paid plan at 1,000,000.

Example: golden-hour times for a New York wedding shoot.

{
    "coordinates": [{ "name": "Central Park", "lat": 40.7829, "lng": -73.9654 }],
    "dates": ["2026-06-21"],
    "timeFormat": "iso"
}

Example: solstice day-length curve across five cities.

{
    "coordinates": [
        { "name": "Reykjavik", "lat": 64.1466, "lng": -21.9426 },
        { "name": "Oslo", "lat": 59.9139, "lng": 10.7522 },
        { "name": "Tokyo", "lat": 35.6762, "lng": 139.6503 },
        { "name": "Nairobi", "lat": -1.2921, "lng": 36.8219 },
        { "name": "Sydney", "lat": -33.8688, "lng": 151.2093 }
    ],
    "dates": ["2026-06-21", "2026-12-21"]
}

⚠️ Good to Know: at very high latitudes the sun may never rise or set on a given date. The polarCondition field flags polar_day or polar_night so downstream code can render UI states correctly instead of showing null timestamps.

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📊 Output

Each solar-times record contains 21 fields. Download the dataset as CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML.

🧾 Schema

Field	Type	Example
🏷️ name	string	"New York City"
📍 latitude	number	40.7128
📍 longitude	number	-74.006
📅 date	string	"2026-06-21"
🌐 timezone	string	"UTC"
🌗 polarCondition	string | null	"normal"
🌅 sunrise	ISO 8601	"2026-06-21T09:25:00.000Z"
🌇 sunset	ISO 8601	"2026-06-22T00:31:00.000Z"
☀️ solarNoon	ISO 8601	"2026-06-21T16:58:00.000Z"
⏱️ dayLengthSeconds	number	54360
⏰ dayLengthHuman	string	"15h 6m"
🌄 civilTwilightBegin	ISO 8601	"2026-06-21T08:52:00.000Z"
🌆 civilTwilightEnd	ISO 8601	"2026-06-22T01:04:00.000Z"
⛵ nauticalTwilightBegin	ISO 8601	"2026-06-21T08:08:00.000Z"
⛵ nauticalTwilightEnd	ISO 8601	"2026-06-22T01:48:00.000Z"
🔭 astronomicalTwilightBegin	ISO 8601	"2026-06-21T07:14:00.000Z"
🔭 astronomicalTwilightEnd	ISO 8601	"2026-06-22T02:42:00.000Z"
📸 goldenHourMorningEnd	ISO 8601	"2026-06-21T09:55:00.000Z"
📸 goldenHourEveningBegin	ISO 8601	"2026-06-22T00:01:00.000Z"
🕒 scrapedAt	ISO 8601	"2026-05-22T00:00:00.000Z"

📦 Sample records

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✨ Why choose this Actor

	Capability
🌍	Worldwide coverage. Any latitude, any longitude, any date past or future.
📸	Golden hour built in. Morning end and evening begin computed server-side.
🌗	Polar handling. polar_day and polar_night flagged automatically.
⚡	Fast. 10 lookups in under 5 seconds, 10,000 in under a minute.
📅	Bulk dates. Pass a list and chart seasonal day-length curves with one run.
🔁	Always fresh. Every run computes against current astronomical algorithms.
🚫	No authentication. Public data, no login or token required.

📊 Accurate solar event times underpin every photo workflow, drone-flight plan, lighting automation, and outdoor activity app on the planet.

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📈 How it compares to alternatives

Approach	Cost	Coverage	Refresh	Filters	Setup
⭐ Sunrise Sunset Times Scraper (this Actor)	$5 free credit, then pay-per-use	Worldwide, any date	Per run	coordinates, dates, format	⚡ 2 min
Local ephemeris library	Free	Worldwide	Code-driven	Custom	🐢 Days
Weather services with sunrise field	Free / $50+/month	Limited cities, today only	Daily	Few	⏳ Hours
Photography golden-hour widgets	Free	Single location	Per click	Few	🕒 Variable

Pick this Actor when you want clean structured rows for many places and many dates at once.

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🚀 How to use

1. 📝 Sign up. Create a free account with $5 credit (takes 2 minutes).
2. 🌐 Open the Actor. Go to the Sunrise Sunset Times Scraper page on the Apify Store.
3. 🎯 Set input. Provide your coordinates and dates, choose ISO or human time format.
4. 🚀 Run it. Click Start and let the Actor collect your data.
5. 📥 Download. Grab your results in the Dataset tab as CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML.

⏱️ Total time from signup to downloaded dataset: 2-4 minutes. No coding required.

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💼 Business use cases

📸 Photography & Cinema Golden-hour bookings for wedding photographers Blue-hour planning for cinematographers Location-scouting reports across multiple dates Client deliverable PDFs with solar event tables	🚁 Drone & Aviation Civil-twilight cutoff for night-flight regulations Crew-rest scheduling based on local sunrise Inspection-window planning by sun angle Aerial-photography golden-hour bookings
🌾 Agriculture & Solar Energy Panel-orientation modeling by season Greenhouse light-cycle scheduling Field-irrigation timing Yield-prediction models that include day length	🏠 Smart Lighting & IoT Sunset-triggered outdoor light automation Tunable-white indoor lighting calibration HOA street-light scheduling Smart-blind closure triggers

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🔌 Automating Sunrise Sunset Times Scraper

Control the scraper programmatically for scheduled runs and pipeline integrations:

• 🟢 Node.js. Install the apify-client NPM package.
• 🐍 Python. Use the apify-client PyPI package.
• 📚 See the Apify API documentation for full details.

The Apify Schedules feature lets you trigger this Actor on any cron interval. Daily refreshes keep tomorrow's sunrise table populated automatically.

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🌟 Beyond business use cases

Data like this powers more than commercial workflows. The same solar event records support research, education, civic projects, and personal initiatives.

🎓 Research and academia Day-length datasets for chronobiology studies Solar-elevation inputs for archaeoastronomy Reproducible photoperiod experiments Climatology coursework on insolation patterns	🎨 Personal and creative Personal sunrise alarm clock automations Generative-art pieces driven by golden-hour times Travel-vlog scheduling Wedding-planning spreadsheets
🤝 Non-profit and civic Religious observance calendars (fasting, prayer) Community lighting plans for safer streets Park-and-trail closing-time signage Open contributions to outdoor-activity apps	🧪 Experimentation Train circadian-pattern ML models Validate sunrise-triggered IoT prototypes Prototype agent pipelines that act at twilight Test geospatial visualization libraries

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🤖 Ask an AI assistant about this scraper

Open a ready-to-send prompt about this ParseForge actor in the AI of your choice:

• 💬 ChatGPT
• 🧠 Claude
• 🔍 Perplexity
• 🅒 Copilot

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❓ Frequently Asked Questions

🧩 How does it work?

Provide a list of coordinates and dates, click Start, and the Actor computes solar event times for every coordinate-date pair and writes one row per result.

📏 How accurate are the times?

Times are computed using the standard astronomical algorithms used by all major solar calculators and are accurate to within about a minute for any sea-level coordinate.

🔁 Does it work for past dates?

Yes. Pass any historic date in YYYY-MM-DD form and the Actor returns the same fields as for future dates.

🌗 What does polarCondition mean?

It flags whether the location experienced normal sunrise/sunset, a polar day (sun never sets), or a polar night (sun never rises) on the requested date.

⏰ Can I schedule regular runs?

Yes. Use Apify Schedules to run this Actor every day and keep tomorrow's sunrise table fresh.

⚖️ Is this data legal to use?

Yes. Solar event times are derived from public astronomical algorithms and are free to use for any purpose.

💼 Can I use this data commercially?

Yes. The data is in the public domain. You remain responsible for downstream compliance in your own product.

💳 Do I need a paid Apify plan?

No. The free plan is enough for testing and small runs (10 records per run). A paid plan unlocks scheduling, higher concurrency, and larger datasets.

🔁 What happens if a run fails?

Apify retries transient errors automatically. Inspect the log in the Runs tab, adjust the input, and re-run. Partial datasets are preserved.

🌅 Why is sunrise an ISO 8601 UTC timestamp?

UTC is unambiguous and easy to convert to any local timezone downstream. Switch timeFormat to human if you prefer 12-hour readable strings.

🆘 What if I need help?

Our support team is here to help. Contact us through the Apify platform or the Tally form linked below.

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🔌 Integrate with any app

Sunrise Sunset Times Scraper connects to any cloud service via Apify integrations:

• Make - Automate multi-step workflows
• Zapier - Connect with 5,000+ apps
• Slack - Get golden-hour reminders in your channels
• Airbyte - Pipe solar event data into your warehouse
• GitHub - Trigger runs from commits and releases
• Google Drive - Export datasets straight to Sheets

You can also use webhooks to trigger downstream actions when a run finishes. Push fresh sunrise times into your smart-lighting controller, or alert your team in Slack at civil twilight.

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🔗 Recommended Actors

• 🌦️ NOAA Weather Scraper - U.S. weather forecasts and observations
• 🛰️ ISS Live Position Scraper - Live position of the ISS
• 🗺️ Nominatim OSM Scraper - Geocode addresses via OpenStreetMap
• ✈️ OurAirports Scraper - Global airport directory
• 📮 Postal Code Lookup Scraper - Postal code to lat/lon resolution

💡 Pro Tip: browse the complete ParseForge collection for more reference-data scrapers.

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🆘 Need Help? Open our contact form to request a new scraper, propose a custom data project, or report an issue.

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⚠️ Disclaimer: this Actor is an independent tool and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the Sunrise Sunset Times project or any third-party astronomical service. All trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners. Only publicly available open data is collected.