Solar Timezones

The time your city should have

Official clocks follow timezone borders, not longitude. Solar Timezones compares as-is clock time with should-be solar time.

Absolute solar drift

0h 1.5h 2.5h+
Ahead of solar time Behind solar time

Search a city above, or click a marker on the map, to see how its official clock compares to solar time — live.

How to interpret

Every city has the official hour it was assigned, and the natural hour it should have by Sun position — the Sun should be at its highest point in the sky at 12:00. This program calculates this solar clock solely using the cities' longitude, no borders or political definitions.

❤️ Motivation

As a Spanish citizen, I always felt the time was off in Spain: sunrise is late, lunch is late, sunset (and dinner) is late. How is it possible that in summer in Madrid it doesn't get dark until 21:30?

If we put the numbers together, it turns out Spain's time is late with respect to the natural hour it should have — in particular, Madrid is off by more than 2 hours in summer. This program was crafted to prove this point, and see what's the case for the rest of the cities in the world.