Sunrise & Sunset in Sydney — Times for Any Date

Why Sydney's daylight swings by four and a half hours

Sydney sits at 33.87° south and 151.21° east, on the coastal shelf of New South Wales. Being south of the equator, its seasons run opposite to the northern hemisphere: the June solstice is the year's shortest day and the December solstice its longest. The swing is wide but not extreme — 9 hours 53 minutes on 23 June against 14 hours 25 minutes on 23 December, a range of 272 minutes.

Latitude alone sets that range. Cities further from the equator swing harder — Chicago, at 41.9° north, moves between 9h 07m and 15h 11m — while cities close to it barely move at all: Singapore, at 1.3° north, holds within about ten minutes all year. Sydney's 33.9° lands in the middle, which is why the city gets generous summer evenings and also a winter sunset that arrives before five o'clock local time.

The month-by-month table

Sunrise and sunset for the first of each month in 2026. The two middle time columns are Australian Eastern Standard Time (UTC+10) — exactly what the calculator above prints, because the engine holds the standard offset fixed all year. The final column repeats the pair on a Sydney clock, where daylight time adds an hour between October and April.

Read the table against the seasons. Daylight peaks at 14h 22m on 1 January and bottoms out at 9h 56m on 1 July — nearly four and a half hours lost in six months. The change is fastest around the equinoxes, roughly two minutes a day at each end, and almost stops at the solstices, which is why a midwinter sunset seems to sit at the same minute for a fortnight.

Sydney sits east of its time meridian

Australian Eastern Standard Time is defined at UTC+10, which corresponds to the 150° east meridian. Sydney's actual longitude is 151.21° east, so the city lies 1.21° east of its own meridian — about 4.8 minutes of solar time. Judged on longitude alone, solar noon would fall near 11:55, slightly before the clock's 12:00.

Across a full year, solar noon actually runs from 11:39 to 12:09 standard time. The 4.8-minute longitude offset never moves; the rest of the swing comes from the equation of time — the gap between apparent and mean solar time created by Earth's elliptical orbit and its 23.44° axial tilt. In early November the Sun runs fast and noon arrives at 11:39; in mid-February it runs slow and noon is pushed to 12:09.

Standard time or daylight time? The one adjustment to make

New South Wales keeps daylight saving from the first Sunday in October to the first Sunday in April. In 2026 clocks go forward on 4 October (2:00 am becomes 3:00 am, UTC+11) and back on 5 April (3:00 am becomes 2:00 am, UTC+10). The calculator does not follow that change: it prints standard time for every date you enter.

So for anything between 4 October 2026 and 5 April 2027, add one hour to both numbers to match a Sydney clock. Between April and October, take them as printed.

The changeover days are where readers get caught. On 3 October the Sun rises at 05:30 standard time, which is also 05:30 on the wall clock. The next morning it rises at 05:28 standard time, but the clock has jumped to 06:28 — an hour later than the day before, even though the Sun itself is two minutes earlier. April reverses it: 4 April reads 06:09 standard and 07:09 local, and on 5 April the same sunrise is 06:10 standard, which is 06:10 local — 59 minutes earlier on the wall.

The formula behind every Sydney sunrise

The calculator follows the NOAA solar-position algorithm, the same one behind most published sunrise tables. For a given date it computes:

1. Fractional year γ = 2π/365 × (day-of-year − 1 + 0.5)
2. Equation of time, in minutes, from a four-term cosine expansion of γ
3. Solar declination δ, from a seven-term expansion of the same angle
4. Hour angle H = arccos[ cos z ÷ (cos φ · cos δ) − tan φ · tan δ ]
5. Sunrise and sunset = solar noon ∓ 4H minutes, with noon = 720 − 4λ − EoT + 60·tz

Here φ is the latitude (negative in the south), λ the longitude in degrees east (positive), and tz the standard offset in hours. The zenith angle z is 90.833°, not 90°. That extra 0.833° is atmospheric refraction at the horizon plus the angular radius of the solar disc: sunrise is defined as the moment the upper limb appears, not when the centre of the Sun crosses the horizon. Drop it and every time on this page moves by roughly four to five minutes.

Three worked examples

All three use the calculator's own standard-time output, so you can enter the same dates above and compare line by line.

21 June 2026 — the June solstice. Sunrise 07:00, sunset 16:53, solar noon 11:57. Daylight runs 9 hours 53 minutes, the shortest of the year. No daylight saving is in force, so the Sydney clock agrees with the printed values. The morning golden hour lasts 55 minutes, from 06:43 (Sun at −4°) to 07:38 (Sun at +6°).

21 December 2026 — the December solstice. Sunrise 04:41, sunset 19:05, solar noon 11:53. Daylight runs 14 hours 24 minutes, the longest of the year. Daylight saving is in force, so add an hour: 05:41 and 20:05 on a Sydney clock. The golden hour is again about 55 minutes at each end and the blue hour 11 minutes.

20 March 2026 — the March equinox. Sunrise 05:58, sunset 18:08, solar noon 12:03. Daylight runs 12 hours 10 minutes — a few minutes over half a day, because refraction and the disc's size lift the Sun into view before the geometric half-day point. Daylight saving is still in force on 20 March, so the clock reads 06:58 and 19:08. The golden hour shortens to 48 minutes, because the Sun crosses the horizon more steeply at an equinox than at a solstice.

Golden hour and blue hour over Sydney Harbour

The calculator defines the golden hour as the window in which the Sun stands between −4° and +6° above the horizon, and the blue hour as the deeper band from −6° to −4°. At Sydney's latitude the golden hour runs about 55 minutes at each end of the day on both solstices and 48 minutes at the equinoxes. The blue hour is much shorter — 11 minutes at the solstices, 10 at the equinoxes.

The geography helps. Sydney's harbour opens eastward to the Pacific, so the sunrise path crosses open water with nothing between the viewer and the horizon — the same geometry that makes the eastern beaches, Watsons Bay and the Heads popular at dawn. Sunset works the other way: the Sun drops behind the Blue Mountains and the western suburbs, which is why the harbour is a sunrise venue and the ridges a sunset one. In June the Sun rises north of due east, behind the North Shore; in December it comes up south of due east, over South Head.

Where the numbers can surprise you

• The calculator prints standard time. Between 4 October 2026 and 5 April 2027, add one hour to match a Sydney clock.
• The earliest sunrise is not on the longest day. Judged on the wall clock, the year's earliest sunrise falls on 3 October at 05:29 local time, one day before daylight saving starts. Once the clock jumps forward, even the December solstice sunrise (04:41 standard) reads 05:41 locally.
• The latest sunrise is not on the shortest day either. It falls on 4 April at 07:09 local, the last morning of daylight time. The following morning reads 06:10.
• Solar noon is never at 12:00. It ranges from 11:39 to 12:09 standard time, moved by longitude and by the equation of time.
• Refraction is already included. The 90.833° zenith means sunrise is the first appearance of the upper limb, not the centre of the disc.
• A clear horizon matters more than elevation. The algorithm assumes an unobstructed horizon at sea level. Standing 100 m up advances sunrise by about a minute; a ridge or a building canopy can delay it by half an hour.

Sources and standards

Coordinates are the standard city reference point, 33.87° S and 151.21° E. The algorithm and the 90.833° zenith follow the NOAA Global Monitoring Laboratory's solar calculator. Time-zone and daylight-saving dates follow the Australian Government's published rules, and the meridian basis (150° E for UTC+10) follows the national geodetic framework.

• NOAA Global Monitoring Laboratory — Solar Calculator
• Australian Government — Time zones and daylight saving
• Geoscience Australia — Geodesy and the national datum
• Bureau of Meteorology — Australian climate and solar exposure records

Tables and worked examples on this page were generated from the site's own solar engine and cross-checked against the live calculator on 23 October 2026. Every time is reproducible: enter the same date above and the same numbers appear.

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