Where Is It Day Right Now?
The map shows the whole world at this moment. Bright areas are in daylight, the darkest areas are in full night, and the soft bands in between are twilight, when the sun is just below the horizon but the sky is still lit. It updates every 30 seconds, and you can drag the time slider or pick a date to see any moment of the year. City dots turn yellow in daylight and pale blue at night, and the table lists their local times.
The Terminator Line
The edge between day and night is called the terminator. It is always a great circle, exactly half the planet, but on a flat map it looks like a wave. Its shape changes through the year because Earth's axis is tilted 23.4° relative to its orbit:
- Around the equinoxes (about March 20 and September 22), the sun is over the equator and the terminator runs almost straight from pole to pole. Everywhere gets roughly 12 hours of daylight.
- Around the June solstice, the sun is over the Tropic of Cancer. The whole Arctic sits in daylight, the midnight sun, while Antarctica is in polar night.
- Around the December solstice, the pattern flips: Antarctica has 24-hour daylight and the Arctic stays dark.
Twilight Zones
Twilight has three official stages, measured by how far the sun is below the horizon: civil twilight (0 to 6°), when there is enough light for most outdoor activities; nautical twilight (6 to 12°), when the horizon is still visible at sea; and astronomical twilight (12 to 18°), when the faintest stars appear. The map draws each stage as a slightly darker band. Find the times for your location on the twilight, sunrise and sunset pages.
How the Map Is Calculated
The position of the sun is worked out from the date and time with the NOAA solar equations, giving the subsolar point, the spot on Earth where the sun is straight overhead. Every place more than 90° away from that point is in night. Local times come from your browser's time zone database, so they include daylight saving time.