Sun and moon planner: find sunrise, sunset, moonrise, moonset, and moon phase for any date and location to plan photography or stargazing. Free, runs locally.
Sun & moon times are approximated from position and date. Real horizon, terrain, refraction, and elevation can shift observed times. All times display in your chosen zone.
Updates automatically as you type.
Calculated in your browser; your inputs are not sent to us. Privacy
Results will appear here.
Calculation details
Every figure above is calculated locally in your browser from the assumptions shown. No inputs are sent anywhere. See the methodology section below for how this tool works.
Use this resultShare the current inputs, or ask ChatGPT to explain the calculation in context.
Ask an AI to explain this result
Share this result
Astronomy estimates only. Terrain, elevation, buildings, weather, atmospheric refraction, and the visible horizon can change observed rise and set times.
This tool runs in your browser. Your calculator inputs and results are never transmitted to us or to ad/affiliate partners. Ads and sponsored links may set third-party cookies to serve and measure them, but they never receive your calculation values. If you explicitly save a scenario, its permitted fields stay in local browser storage until you clear them. See our Privacy Policy.
Use this result
Share the current inputs or ask ChatGPT to explain the calculation in context.
Sun and moon planner: find sunrise, sunset, moonrise, moonset, and moon phase for any date and location to plan photography or stargazing. Free, runs locally.
A sun and moon planner is a browser-based web tool that helps you schedule tasks by aligning them with solar and lunar cycles without requiring any account signup.
Do I need to create an account to use the sun and moon planner?
No, this sun and moon planner is a no-signup tool that runs entirely in your browser, keeping your data private and local to your device.
Is my data safe and private when using the sun and moon planner?
Yes, because the sun and moon planner is browser-based and requires no signup, your schedules never leave your computer and are not stored on any server.
BoringToolsKit. “Sun & Moon Planner.” boringtoolskit.com/sun-moon-planner/. Free to reference in articles, syllabi, and answer posts with a link.
Privacy: Inputs and results stay in this browser. Any future sponsored recommendation or advertisement will be clearly labeled and kept separate from the calculation.
A worked example from raw inputs to phase label
Say the date is 25 January 2024 and the site uses the standard lunar reference: a known new moon at 11:57 UTC on 11 January 2024, with a mean synodic month of 29.53 days. Step 1, elapsed time: from 11 Jan to 25 Jan is 14 days, minus the 11:57 offset is about 13.5 days. Step 2, fraction of cycle: 13.5 / 29.53 = 0.4572. Step 3, map to a name: 0.4572 x 8 = 3.66, add 0.5 gives 4.16, and the floor of that is 4. Index 4 in the calculator's eight-name list is Full Moon, which matches the almanac value for that date (the Moon was 99% illuminated).
The same rounding explains borderline labels. At 0.44 of the cycle (3.52 raw, still under the 3.5 cutoff) you get Waxing Gibbous; at 0.46 you get Full Moon. A single 0.02 shift in the fraction, about 14 hours of real time, flips the name. That is why the phase shown for 00:30 and 14:00 on the same calendar day can differ, and why almanacs publish phase times in UTC minutes rather than a named phase per date.
Solar times follow the same transparent arithmetic. For a location at longitude 75 degrees west, the mean solar noon is 5 hours behind Greenwich, so it lands near 17:00 UTC. The equation of time then nudges it: in late January it is about minus 12 minutes (solar noon runs 12 minutes early), so the planner outputs roughly 16:48 UTC, displayed as 11:48 in the America/New_York zone.
Where the times break down in practice
Polar latitudes are the hard case, and the code handles them explicitly with an always-up / always-down moon flag rather than printing a bogus time. Above roughly 66.6 degrees latitude, the summer Sun never sets: at 70 N in late June, civil dusk does not exist, so the daylight row would be a full 24 hours and the dawn/dusk cells are empty. The Moon can do the same for days at a stretch near its major standstill, an 18.6-year cycle that last peaked in 2025.
The phase name is a label, not a measurement. Each of the eight names covers exactly one eighth of the 29.53-day cycle, 3.69 days or about 12.4 percent of illumination range. A Moon at 47% illumination may be labeled First Quarter while the true quarter-moon instant, when it is almost exactly 50% lit, falls on a different day. Planning a dark-sky shoot should use the illumination percentage and moonrise/moonset rows, not the phase name.
Finally, horizon geometry is ignored. Standard formulas compute rise and set for a flat horizon with about 0.57 degrees of atmospheric refraction added, so a mountain ridge or sea cliff shifts real moonrise by several minutes: the Moon moves its own diameter (about 0.5 degrees) roughly every 2 hours, so a 1-degree ridge delays it by around 4 minutes, more at shallow rise angles.