Sunrise 6:17 am and sunset 6:21 pm in Chandler
Today, Thursday, September 24, 2026, the sun rises in Chandler, AZ at 6:17 am and sets at 6:21 pm. That is 12 hours 4 minutes of daylight, with the sun at its highest at 12:19 pm. Chandler is losing 2 minutes 3 seconds of daylight a day at the moment.
Sunrise time Chandler
The sun rises in Chandler, AZ at 6:17 am today. That is the moment the top edge of the solar disc first clears a flat horizon, which is the definition every almanac uses and the one the times here are computed to. The sky starts to lighten well before that: civil twilight, the point at which you can read outside without a light, begins at 5:52 am.
Sunrise here is moving later at the moment. Over the year the earliest sunrise in Chandler falls on June 12, 2026 at 5:17 am, and the latest on January 8, 2026 at 7:32 am. Neither of those dates is the solstice, and that surprises people. The longest day in Chandler is June 21, 2026, but the earliest sunrise and the latest sunset never sit exactly on it, because the equation of time slides underneath the whole pattern.
Sunset time Chandler
The sun sets in Chandler, AZ at 6:21 pm. Light lingers after that: civil twilight runs until 6:46 pm, and full darkness, meaning the end of astronomical twilight, arrives at 7:44 pm.
The latest sunset of 2026 in Chandler is on June 29, 2026 at 7:41 pm, and the earliest is on December 4, 2026 at 5:20 pm. The gap between those two readings is the whole story of the year in one line, and it is wider here than at a city nearer the equator and narrower than at one nearer the pole.
Daylight and solar noon in Chandler
Daylight today runs to 12 hours 4 minutes, from sunrise to sunset. Solar noon, the instant the sun crosses the local meridian and stands at its highest, is at 12:19 pm, which is 19 minutes after clock noon. That gap is not an error. It is Chandler sitting at 111.84 degrees west while its clock is set to America/Phoenix, plus the equation of time, which today is 8.1 minutes ahead of mean time.
The sun's declination today is -0.70 degrees, meaning it stands directly overhead at that latitude somewhere on the globe. Chandler is at 33.31 degrees north, in the subtropical belt, which is why the day here is 12h 04m rather than the flat twelve hours the equator gets. Across 2026 the length of the day in Chandler swings by 4 hours 25 minutes, from 9h 57m on December 21, 2026 to 14h 22m on June 21, 2026.
Sunrise and sunset in Chandler month by month
The table below is the 15th of each month of 2026, computed for Chandler, AZ rather than for the zone as a whole. Reading down the daylight column shows the shape of the year: short days around January, long days around July.
| Date | Sunrise | Sunset | Daylight | Solar noon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| January 15 | 7:31 am | 5:43 pm | 10h 12m | 12:37 pm |
| February 15 | 7:11 am | 6:12 pm | 11h 01m | 12:41 pm |
| March 15 | 6:37 am | 6:35 pm | 11h 58m | 12:36 pm |
| April 15 | 5:57 am | 6:58 pm | 13h 01m | 12:27 pm |
| May 15 | 5:27 am | 7:21 pm | 13h 53m | 12:24 pm |
| June 15 | 5:18 am | 7:38 pm | 14h 21m | 12:28 pm |
| July 15 | 5:29 am | 7:37 pm | 14h 08m | 12:33 pm |
| August 15 | 5:50 am | 7:13 pm | 13h 23m | 12:32 pm |
| September 15 | 6:11 am | 6:33 pm | 12h 22m | 12:22 pm |
| October 15 | 6:32 am | 5:54 pm | 11h 22m | 12:13 pm |
| November 15 | 6:59 am | 5:25 pm | 10h 26m | 12:12 pm |
| December 15 | 7:24 am | 5:22 pm | 9h 58m | 12:23 pm |
The extremes of the year in Chandler
| Reading | Time or length | Date in 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Longest day | 14 hours 22 minutes | June 21, 2026 |
| Shortest day | 9 hours 57 minutes | December 21, 2026 |
| Earliest sunrise | 5:17 am | June 12, 2026 |
| Latest sunrise | 7:32 am | January 8, 2026 |
| Earliest sunset | 5:20 pm | December 4, 2026 |
| Latest sunset | 7:41 pm | June 29, 2026 |
The sun rises and sets on every one of the 365 days of 2026 in Chandler. No day here is ever entirely without a sunrise, which starts to happen only above roughly 66.56 degrees of latitude.
Golden hour and blue hour in Chandler today
Golden hour is the stretch when the sun sits between six degrees above the horizon and four below it, which is when the light is low, warm and soft. Blue hour follows it, from four degrees below down to six, when the sun is gone but the sky still carries a blue cast. Both happen twice a day, once either side of sunrise and sunset.
| Band | Time in Chandler |
|---|---|
| Morning blue hour | 5:52 am to 6:02 am |
| Morning golden hour | 6:02 am to 6:50 am |
| Evening golden hour | 5:48 pm to 6:36 pm |
| Evening blue hour | 6:36 pm to 6:46 pm |
Neither is literally an hour. Each band is as long as the sun takes to cross those few degrees, so it is short near the equator where the sun drops steeply and long at high latitude where it slides in at a shallow angle. This evening it runs 48 minutes in Chandler.
Twilight times in Chandler today
| Stage | Morning | Evening | What it means |
|---|---|---|---|
| Astronomical twilight | 4:54 am | 7:44 pm | sun 18 degrees down, the sky is as dark as it gets |
| Nautical twilight | 5:23 am | 7:15 pm | sun 12 degrees down, the horizon is just visible at sea |
| Civil twilight | 5:52 am | 6:46 pm | sun 6 degrees down, bright enough to read outside |
Twilight is longer the further a place is from the equator, because the sun cuts down through the horizon at a shallower angle. In Chandler the stretch from the start of civil twilight to sunrise is 25 minutes.
Solstices and equinoxes in Chandler
| Event | Date | Sunrise | Sunset | Daylight |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| March equinox | March 20 | 6:31 am | 6:39 pm | 12h 08m |
| June solstice | June 21 | 5:18 am | 7:40 pm | 14h 22m |
| September equinox | September 22 | 6:16 am | 6:24 pm | 12h 08m |
| December solstice | December 21 | 7:27 am | 5:24 pm | 9h 57m |
The equinoxes are the useful sanity check on any sun calculation: on those two days every place on Earth gets close to twelve hours between sunrise and sunset. It is not exactly twelve, and the reason is the same refraction and disc-edge convention that sets the times on this page. Sunrise is timed when the upper limb appears rather than the centre, and the atmosphere bends the image of the sun up over the horizon before it is geometrically there, so both ends of the day are pushed outwards by a few minutes. The seasons page has the exact instants.
How these times are worked out
The times on this page come from the NOAA solar position algorithm, the standard reduction of the calculations in Meeus's Astronomical Algorithms. The chain is short and has no fitted constants in it: the sun's mean longitude and mean anomaly at the instant, the equation of centre to get from the mean to the true position, a correction for nutation to get the apparent longitude, the true obliquity of the ecliptic, and from those two the declination and the equation of time. Sunrise and sunset are then solar noon plus and minus the hour angle at which the sun reaches an altitude of -0.833 degrees.
That number, -0.833, is doing real work. Half of it, -0.2667 degrees, is the apparent radius of the sun, because sunrise is defined by the upper edge of the disc and not its centre. The other -0.5667 degrees is mean atmospheric refraction at the horizon, which lifts the image of the sun by roughly its own diameter. Ignore both and every sunrise on this site would be three or four minutes late and every sunset three or four minutes early.
The conversion into America/Phoenix is done through the IANA time zone database that ships inside Node, at the actual instant of the event, so daylight saving, half hour offsets and rule changes are all handled by the database rather than by an offset written down here. Chandler does not move its clocks at all. The zone stays at UTC-7 all year, so every change in the table above is the sun moving and not the clock.
Questions
- What time is sunset in Chandler?
- 6:21 pm today, September 24, 2026.
- What time is sunrise in Chandler?
- 6:17 am today.
- When is golden hour in Chandler today?
- The evening golden hour runs 5:48 pm to 6:36 pm, and the morning one 6:02 am to 6:50 am.
- What time does the sun set in Chandler today?
- At 6:21 pm on September 24, 2026.
- What time does the sun rise in Chandler today?
- At 6:17 am, giving 12 hours 4 minutes of daylight.
- How many hours of daylight does Chandler get today?
- 12 hours 4 minutes, and the city is losing 2 minutes 3 seconds of daylight a day.
- Why is solar noon in Chandler not at 12:00?
- Because Chandler sits at 111.84 degrees west while its clock is set to a zone meridian somewhere else, and because the equation of time shifts apparent noon by up to about 16 minutes either way through the year. Today the two effects put solar noon at 12:19 pm.
- When is the longest day of the year in Chandler?
- June 21, 2026, with 14 hours 22 minutes of daylight. The shortest is December 21, 2026 with 9 hours 57 minutes.
- Are these times adjusted for daylight saving?
- Chandler does not observe daylight saving, so the question does not arise. The zone stays at UTC-7 all year.
Sunrise and sunset in nearby cities
Timezone converter · Seasons and solstices · Moon phases · Day of the year