Sunrise 7:22 am and sunset 7:49 pm in Punta Arenas
Today, Saturday, September 26, 2026, the sun rises in Punta Arenas, Chile at 7:22 am and sets at 7:49 pm. That is 12 hours 26 minutes of daylight, with the sun at its highest at 1:35 pm. Punta Arenas is gaining 4 minutes 10 seconds of daylight a day at the moment.
Sunrise time Punta Arenas
The sun rises in Punta Arenas, Chile at 7:22 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 6:48 am.
Sunrise here is moving earlier at the moment. Over the year the earliest sunrise in Punta Arenas falls on December 14, 2026 at 5:11 am, and the latest on June 25, 2026 at 10:00 am. Neither of those dates is the solstice, and that surprises people. The longest day in Punta Arenas is December 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 Punta Arenas
The sun sets in Punta Arenas, Chile at 7:49 pm. Light lingers after that: civil twilight runs until 8:23 pm, and full darkness, meaning the end of astronomical twilight, arrives at 9:49 pm.
The latest sunset of 2026 in Punta Arenas is on December 29, 2026 at 10:13 pm, and the earliest is on June 16, 2026 at 5:31 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 Punta Arenas
Daylight today runs to 12 hours 26 minutes, from sunrise to sunset. Solar noon, the instant the sun crosses the local meridian and stands at its highest, is at 1:35 pm, which is 95 minutes after clock noon. That gap is not an error. It is Punta Arenas sitting at 70.91 degrees west while its clock is set to America/Punta_Arenas, plus the equation of time, which today is 8.7 minutes ahead of mean time.
The sun's declination today is -1.43 degrees, meaning it stands directly overhead at that latitude somewhere on the globe. Punta Arenas is at 53.16 degrees south, high in the temperate belt, which is why the day here is 12h 26m rather than the flat twelve hours the equator gets. Across 2026 the length of the day in Punta Arenas swings by 9 hours 26 minutes, from 7h 32m on June 21, 2026 to 16h 58m on December 21, 2026.
Sunrise and sunset in Punta Arenas month by month
The table below is the 15th of each month of 2026, computed for Punta Arenas, Chile rather than for the zone as a whole. Reading down the daylight column shows the shape of the year: long days around January, short days around July, because the southern hemisphere runs the opposite way round.
| Date | Sunrise | Sunset | Daylight | Solar noon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| January 15 | 5:42 am | 10:03 pm | 16h 21m | 1:53 pm |
| February 15 | 6:42 am | 9:12 pm | 14h 30m | 1:58 pm |
| March 15 | 7:36 am | 8:08 pm | 12h 32m | 1:52 pm |
| April 15 | 8:32 am | 6:55 pm | 10h 23m | 1:44 pm |
| May 15 | 9:23 am | 5:57 pm | 8h 34m | 1:40 pm |
| June 15 | 9:57 am | 5:31 pm | 7h 34m | 1:44 pm |
| July 15 | 9:49 am | 5:50 pm | 8h 01m | 1:50 pm |
| August 15 | 9:00 am | 6:37 pm | 9h 38m | 1:48 pm |
| September 15 | 7:49 am | 7:30 pm | 11h 41m | 1:39 pm |
| October 15 | 6:37 am | 8:23 pm | 13h 46m | 1:29 pm |
| November 15 | 5:35 am | 9:22 pm | 15h 47m | 1:28 pm |
| December 15 | 5:11 am | 10:07 pm | 16h 56m | 1:39 pm |
The extremes of the year in Punta Arenas
| Reading | Time or length | Date in 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Longest day | 16 hours 58 minutes | December 21, 2026 |
| Shortest day | 7 hours 32 minutes | June 21, 2026 |
| Earliest sunrise | 5:11 am | December 14, 2026 |
| Latest sunrise | 10:00 am | June 25, 2026 |
| Earliest sunset | 5:31 pm | June 16, 2026 |
| Latest sunset | 10:13 pm | December 29, 2026 |
The sun rises and sets on every one of the 365 days of 2026 in Punta Arenas. 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 Punta Arenas 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 Punta Arenas |
|---|---|
| Morning blue hour | 6:48 am to 7:01 am |
| Morning golden hour | 7:01 am to 8:08 am |
| Evening golden hour | 7:03 pm to 8:10 pm |
| Evening blue hour | 8:10 pm to 8:23 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 1 hour 7 minutes in Punta Arenas.
Twilight times in Punta Arenas today
| Stage | Morning | Evening | What it means |
|---|---|---|---|
| Astronomical twilight | 5:23 am | 9:49 pm | sun 18 degrees down, the sky is as dark as it gets |
| Nautical twilight | 6:06 am | 9:05 pm | sun 12 degrees down, the horizon is just visible at sea |
| Civil twilight | 6:48 am | 8:23 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 Punta Arenas the stretch from the start of civil twilight to sunrise is 35 minutes.
Solstices and equinoxes in Punta Arenas
| Event | Date | Sunrise | Sunset | Daylight |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| March equinox | March 20 | 7:45 am | 7:56 pm | 12h 11m |
| June solstice | June 21 | 10:00 am | 5:31 pm | 7h 32m |
| September equinox | September 22 | 7:32 am | 7:42 pm | 12h 10m |
| December solstice | December 21 | 5:13 am | 10:11 pm | 16h 58m |
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/Punta_Arenas 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. Punta Arenas does not move its clocks at all. The zone stays at UTC-3 all year, so every change in the table above is the sun moving and not the clock.
Questions
- What time is sunset in Punta Arenas?
- 7:49 pm today, September 26, 2026.
- What time is sunrise in Punta Arenas?
- 7:22 am today.
- When is golden hour in Punta Arenas today?
- The evening golden hour runs 7:03 pm to 8:10 pm, and the morning one 7:01 am to 8:08 am.
- What time does the sun set in Punta Arenas today?
- At 7:49 pm on September 26, 2026.
- What time does the sun rise in Punta Arenas today?
- At 7:22 am, giving 12 hours 26 minutes of daylight.
- How many hours of daylight does Punta Arenas get today?
- 12 hours 26 minutes, and the city is gaining 4 minutes 10 seconds of daylight a day.
- Why is solar noon in Punta Arenas not at 12:00?
- Because Punta Arenas sits at 70.91 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 1:35 pm.
- When is the longest day of the year in Punta Arenas?
- December 21, 2026, with 16 hours 58 minutes of daylight. The shortest is June 21, 2026 with 7 hours 32 minutes.
- Are these times adjusted for daylight saving?
- Punta Arenas does not observe daylight saving, so the question does not arise. The zone stays at UTC-3 all year.
Sunrise and sunset in nearby cities
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