Golden hour and twilight times
Sunrise, sunset, the soft golden light photographers wait for, the blue hour after it, and every stage of twilight, for your city and any date.
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What the times mean
When the sun is low, between 6° above the horizon and 4° below it, its light crosses more air. Blue light is scattered away, so what reaches you is warm, soft and makes long shadows. In the UAE it lasts about 45 minutes, twice a day.
Just after sunset (and just before sunrise) the sun is 4° to 6° below the horizon. There is no direct sunlight, only deep blue light from the sky: the moment when city lights and the sky are equally bright.
Civil twilight ends when the sun is 6° below the horizon: you can still see outdoors without lights. Nautical twilight ends at 12°, when the horizon at sea is hard to see. Astronomical twilight ends at 18°, when the sky is fully dark.
Near the tropics the sun sets almost straight down, so twilight is short. In the UAE the sky is fully dark 75 to 90 minutes after sunset. In London in midsummer it never gets fully dark at all.
Sources: Sun positions from Astronomy Engine by Don Cross (MIT licence), which uses the VSOP87 planetary model and is checked against the NASA JPL Horizons system to within about 1 arcminute. Sunrise and sunset use the standard definition (the top of the sun's disc on the horizon, allowing for refraction), as used by the U.S. Naval Observatory. Twilight limits of 6°, 12° and 18° below the horizon are the standard U.S. Naval Observatory definitions. Golden hour (sun from 6° above to 4° below the horizon) and blue hour (4° to 6° below) follow common photography definitions; other sources use slightly different angles. Check: for Dubai on 26 October 2026 this page gives sunrise 06:22, sunset 17:42, evening golden hour from 17:11 and full darkness at 18:59; a published sunrise and golden-hour table for Dubai gives the same times to within a minute. Times are for a flat horizon at sea level: buildings, dunes and mountains change what you see. Times are UAE time (UTC+4).