Sunrise 5:06 am and sunset 5:15 pm in Santa Rita
Today, Monday, September 28, 2026, the sun rises in Santa Rita, Brazil at 5:06 am and sets at 5:15 pm. That is 12 hours 9 minutes of daylight, with the sun at its highest at 11:11 am. Santa Rita is gaining 24 seconds of daylight a day at the moment.
Sunrise time Santa Rita
The sun rises in Santa Rita, Brazil at 5:06 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 4:45 am.
Sunrise here is moving earlier at the moment. Over the year the earliest sunrise in Santa Rita falls on November 14, 2026 at 4:51 am, and the latest on July 16, 2026 at 5:34 am. Neither of those dates is the solstice, and that surprises people. The longest day in Santa Rita 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 Santa Rita
The sun sets in Santa Rita, Brazil at 5:15 pm. Light lingers after that: civil twilight runs until 5:36 pm, and full darkness, meaning the end of astronomical twilight, arrives at 6:24 pm.
The latest sunset of 2026 in Santa Rita is on January 30, 2026 at 5:46 pm, and the earliest is on May 24, 2026 at 5:09 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 Santa Rita
Daylight today runs to 12 hours 9 minutes, from sunrise to sunset. Solar noon, the instant the sun crosses the local meridian and stands at its highest, is at 11:11 am, which is 49 minutes before clock noon. That gap is not an error. It is Santa Rita sitting at 34.98 degrees west while its clock is set to America/Fortaleza, plus the equation of time, which today is 9.4 minutes ahead of mean time.
The sun's declination today is -2.17 degrees, meaning it stands directly overhead at that latitude somewhere on the globe. Santa Rita is at 7.11 degrees south, within eight degrees of the equator, which is why the day here is 12h 09m rather than the flat twelve hours the equator gets. Across 2026 the length of the day in Santa Rita swings by 50 minutes, from 11h 43m on June 21, 2026 to 12h 32m on December 21, 2026.
Sunrise and sunset in Santa Rita month by month
The table below is the 15th of each month of 2026, computed for Santa Rita, Brazil 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 | 5:15 am | 5:44 pm | 12h 29m | 11:29 am |
| February 15 | 5:24 am | 5:44 pm | 12h 20m | 11:34 am |
| March 15 | 5:24 am | 5:33 pm | 12h 09m | 11:29 am |
| April 15 | 5:22 am | 5:18 pm | 11h 57m | 11:20 am |
| May 15 | 5:23 am | 5:10 pm | 11h 47m | 11:16 am |
| June 15 | 5:29 am | 5:12 pm | 11h 43m | 11:20 am |
| July 15 | 5:34 am | 5:18 pm | 11h 45m | 11:26 am |
| August 15 | 5:28 am | 5:21 pm | 11h 53m | 11:24 am |
| September 15 | 5:13 am | 5:17 pm | 12h 04m | 11:15 am |
| October 15 | 4:58 am | 5:13 pm | 12h 15m | 11:06 am |
| November 15 | 4:51 am | 5:18 pm | 12h 26m | 11:04 am |
| December 15 | 4:59 am | 5:31 pm | 12h 32m | 11:15 am |
The extremes of the year in Santa Rita
| Reading | Time or length | Date in 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Longest day | 12 hours 32 minutes | December 21, 2026 |
| Shortest day | 11 hours 43 minutes | June 21, 2026 |
| Earliest sunrise | 4:51 am | November 14, 2026 |
| Latest sunrise | 5:34 am | July 16, 2026 |
| Earliest sunset | 5:09 pm | May 24, 2026 |
| Latest sunset | 5:46 pm | January 30, 2026 |
The sun rises and sets on every one of the 365 days of 2026 in Santa Rita. 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 Santa Rita 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 Santa Rita |
|---|---|
| Morning blue hour | 4:45 am to 4:53 am |
| Morning golden hour | 4:53 am to 5:34 am |
| Evening golden hour | 4:47 pm to 5:28 pm |
| Evening blue hour | 5:28 pm to 5:36 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 40 minutes in Santa Rita.
Twilight times in Santa Rita today
| Stage | Morning | Evening | What it means |
|---|---|---|---|
| Astronomical twilight | 3:57 am | 6:24 pm | sun 18 degrees down, the sky is as dark as it gets |
| Nautical twilight | 4:21 am | 6:00 pm | sun 12 degrees down, the horizon is just visible at sea |
| Civil twilight | 4:45 am | 5:36 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 Santa Rita the stretch from the start of civil twilight to sunrise is 21 minutes.
Solstices and equinoxes in Santa Rita
| Event | Date | Sunrise | Sunset | Daylight |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| March equinox | March 20 | 5:24 am | 5:31 pm | 12h 07m |
| June solstice | June 21 | 5:30 am | 5:13 pm | 11h 43m |
| September equinox | September 22 | 5:09 am | 5:16 pm | 12h 06m |
| December solstice | December 21 | 5:02 am | 5:34 pm | 12h 32m |
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/Fortaleza 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. Santa Rita 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 Santa Rita?
- 5:15 pm today, September 28, 2026.
- What time is sunrise in Santa Rita?
- 5:06 am today.
- When is golden hour in Santa Rita today?
- The evening golden hour runs 4:47 pm to 5:28 pm, and the morning one 4:53 am to 5:34 am.
- What time does the sun set in Santa Rita today?
- At 5:15 pm on September 28, 2026.
- What time does the sun rise in Santa Rita today?
- At 5:06 am, giving 12 hours 9 minutes of daylight.
- How many hours of daylight does Santa Rita get today?
- 12 hours 9 minutes, and the city is gaining 24 seconds of daylight a day.
- Why is solar noon in Santa Rita not at 12:00?
- Because Santa Rita sits at 34.98 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 11:11 am.
- When is the longest day of the year in Santa Rita?
- December 21, 2026, with 12 hours 32 minutes of daylight. The shortest is June 21, 2026 with 11 hours 43 minutes.
- Are these times adjusted for daylight saving?
- Santa Rita 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
Timezone converter · Seasons and solstices · Moon phases · Day of the year