Live day and night map

Reading the map

The lit area is where the sun is above the horizon. Its edge, the terminator, separates the places where the sun is rising from those where it is setting. It moves from east to west by one degree of longitude every four minutes, that is 15° an hour.

After sunset, night falls in stages, which the map shows as a gradient:

• civil twilight (sun less than 6° below the horizon): you can still read outdoors without a light;
• nautical twilight (6° to 12°): the sea horizon disappears and the brightest stars come out;
• astronomical twilight (12° to 18°): the sky finishes darkening;
• night beyond 18°.

Why is the line curved?

The Earth is tilted by 23.4° on its orbit. At the March and September equinoxes, the sun is overhead at the equator: the terminator runs almost straight from pole to pole and the day lasts twelve hours everywhere. Around the June solstice, the North Pole stays lit all the time and the line curves; it is the other way round in December, with continuous night beyond the Arctic Circle.

Day, night and time zones

Time zones roughly follow the sun, but borders, daylight saving time and governments’ choices pull them away from it: in Spain, the sun is highest around 14:00 in summer. Tap the map to find the legal time anywhere, or see the world’s time zones.