Daylight map
Land is shaded by how long the day is: bright where days are long, dark where they’re short. Drag through the year to watch the long days swing from one hemisphere to the other.
Tap a city, or anywhere on the map, for its day length.
How to read it
Day length depends almost entirely on latitude, so the shading runs in bands. Around the June solstice the far north is bright and the far south dark; around the December solstice it’s the reverse. At the equinoxes the whole map turns the same even shade: about 12 hours everywhere.
The dark shadow is night at this moment: where the sun has set. It slides west as the Earth turns, a full lap every 24 hours. On other dates it shows the same time of day, so dragging through the year shows the polar night growing and shrinking.
Near the equator the shading barely changes all year. Past the polar circles it runs from no daylight at all to round-the-clock sun. More in how latitude shapes daylight.