Four and a half hours of swing at 34° N
Los Angeles runs from 9h 53m of daylight on 22 December to 14h 26m on 21 June — a swing of 273 minutes. Sunrise moves between 04:41 (13 June) and 06:59 (7 January); sunset between 16:44 (6 December) and 19:08 (30 June), all standard time.
Latitude is only half of it. The city sits at the eastern edge of its time zone, so solar noon arrives before 12:00 for most of the year, and the Pacific gives the Sun a clean horizon.
The formula behind every Los Angeles sunrise
No figure is stored. Every time is recomputed from the Sun's position at 34.05° N, 118.24° W, using the NOAA solar-position algorithm in four steps.
1. Fractional year. The date becomes an angle: γ = 2π / 365 × (dayOfYear − 1 + 0.5).
2. Equation of time. Apparent minus mean solar time, in minutes: eqTime = 229.18 × (0.000075 + 0.001868 cos γ − 0.032077 sin γ − 0.014615 cos 2γ − 0.040849 sin 2γ).
3. Solar declination. How far the Sun stands above the celestial equator: δ = 0.006918 − 0.399912 cos γ + 0.070257 sin γ − 0.006758 cos 2γ + 0.000907 sin 2γ − 0.002697 cos 3γ + 0.00148 sin 3γ.
4. Hour angle. The angle from local noon at which the Sun crosses the horizon, solved at the standard zenith of 90.833° — the upper limb of the disc, refraction included.
Solar noon then lands at 720 − 4 × longitude − eqTime + timezone × 60 minutes, and sunrise or sunset sits four minutes of clock time per degree of hour angle either side of it.
PST or PDT? The one adjustment to make
The calculator is fixed to Los Angeles' standard offset of UTC−8, so every time printed is Pacific Standard Time. In 2026 Pacific Daylight Time runs from 8 March (second Sunday in March) to 1 November (first Sunday in November); add one hour during that window — the 04:42 sunrise on 21 June is 05:42 PDT.
Longitude is the second adjustment, and it works the other way. The zone's meridian is 120° W, the city 118.24° W — 1.76° east of it — so the Sun crosses about 7 minutes early; the equation of time then moves solar noon between 11:37 and 12:07.
Daylight through the year at 34° N
Eight dates across 2026, all in PST.
| Date (2026) | Sunrise (PST) | Sunset (PST) | Daylight |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-01-15 | 06:58 | 17:05 | 10h 07m |
| 2026-03-20 | 05:58 | 18:04 | 12h 07m |
| 2026-05-01 | 05:04 | 18:36 | 13h 32m |
| 2026-06-21 | 04:42 | 19:07 | 14h 26m |
| 2026-08-01 | 05:04 | 18:55 | 13h 51m |
| 2026-09-22 | 05:40 | 17:51 | 12h 10m |
| 2026-11-01 | 06:12 | 17:01 | 10h 49m |
| 2026-12-21 | 06:55 | 16:47 | 9h 53m |
Note the clock offset: the earliest sunset (6 December, 16:44) comes a fortnight before the solstice, the latest (30 June, 19:08) nine days after.
Three worked examples
Each is the calculator's own output in PST, with PDT where daylight time applies.
Example 1 — 21 June 2026, the June solstice
- Solar noon: 11:54 PST (12:54 PDT)
- Sunrise: 04:42 PST (05:42 PDT) · Sunset: 19:07 PST (20:07 PDT)
- Length of day: 14h 26m
- Golden hour: 04:24–05:19 and 18:30–19:25 PST, 55 minutes each
Example 2 — 21 December 2026, the December solstice
- Solar noon: 11:51 PST
- Sunrise: 06:55 PST · Sunset: 16:47 PST
- Length of day: 9h 53m
- Golden hour: 06:37–07:33 and 16:09–17:05 PST, 56 minutes each
Example 3 — 22 September 2026, the September equinox
- Solar noon: 11:46 PDT
- Sunrise: 05:40 PDT · Sunset: 17:51 PDT
- Length of day: 12h 10m
- Golden hour: 05:25–06:13 and 17:18–18:06 PDT, 48 minutes each
Golden and blue hour, the Los Angeles way
The calculator defines the golden hour as the window in which the Sun stands between −4° and +6°, and the blue hour as the stretch from −6° to −4°.
The Sun's path is shallow at 34°, so it lingers in that band: 55 to 56 minutes per window all year, blue hour 11 minutes. Singapore gets 40 to 44 for the same geometry — the angle decides it.
May Gray and June Gloom
The astronomy gives Los Angeles some of the most reliable golden hours anywhere; the coastal climate periodically takes them back. In late spring the ocean is still cold from winter upwelling while the land warms quickly, trapping a shallow layer of stratus under the inversion — a few hundred metres deep, sitting on the Santa Monica Bay shoreline and often holding until mid-morning, so the 05:42 PDT solstice sunrise can be a uniformly grey sky. It fades as the ocean warms through July, and by September the coast delivers clean horizons.
Where the numbers can surprise you
- The calculator prints PST. Between 8 March and 1 November 2026, add one hour before comparing with a wall clock.
- Solar noon is early, not late. It ranges from 11:37 to 12:07 because the city sits east of the 120° W meridian.
- Hills cut both ways. The Santa Monica Mountains delay sunrise for the basin; a clean ocean horizon to the west lets sunset run to the minute.
Sources and standards
Where these figures come from
Every formula on this page is implemented from the published reference material below, and each worked example is reproduced by the script that built the page. Where a value depends on a local rule — the daylight-saving dates, for instance — the page states the rule rather than assuming one.
- NOAA Global Monitoring Laboratory — Solar Calculator — the solar-position algorithm underlying sunrise, sunset, solar noon and the equation of time.
- NIST Time and Frequency Division — the definition of Coordinated Universal Time and the standard offset used here.
- NASA Science — Sun — solar geometry and the twilight definitions behind the golden and blue hours.
Figures, formulas and reference tables last verified: 20 October 2026.