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Sun Direction Map Canada

See exactly where the sun rises and sets on an interactive map, with sunrise, sunset, golden hour, and moon times for any location in Canada. Above the Arctic Circle, where the sun genuinely does not set in summer or rise in winter, this tool says so plainly instead of showing a blank time with no explanation.

By Dan · Uses Statistics Canada's National Address Register · Last updated September 2026

See Where the Sun Rises and Sets, Anywhere in Canada

Enter a postal code, address, or click the map to see sunrise and sunset direction drawn as lines on an interactive map, with the exact compass bearing labelled in degrees. Most sunrise/sunset calculators only give you times - this one shows you which direction to actually look, which matters for photography, home orientation, solar panel placement, or just knowing which way to point a camera before the light is gone.

What sets this version apart from other sunrise/sunset tools, including the maps.uk and maptools.co versions this one is built from: those tools show a blank "--:--" for any location above the Arctic Circle during polar day or polar night, with no explanation of what's actually happening. Canada has real, inhabited places up there - Alert, Resolute, Grise Fiord, Eureka - and this tool detects both cases and says plainly which one is happening, with the date it started and roughly when it will end.

Polar Day and Polar Night, Explained Honestly

Above roughly 66.5 degrees North (the Arctic Circle), the sun's daily path stops crossing the horizon for real stretches of the year. In summer, the sun stays above the horizon continuously - polar day, sometimes called the midnight sun. In winter, the opposite happens: the sun stays below the horizon continuously - polar night. Both are real, expected astronomical facts at these latitudes, not errors, and the length of each stretch grows the further north you go - at Alert, Nunavut (82.5 degrees North, the northernmost permanently inhabited place in the world), polar day and polar night each last several months.

This tool checks the sun's altitude at solar noon (its highest point of the day) and solar midnight (its lowest point) to tell the two cases apart, then looks day by day, forward and back, to find roughly when the current stretch started and when it will end. That's shown plainly above the times, not left for you to infer from a blank result.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why does it say the sun does not set or does not rise today?

This happens at latitudes above the Arctic Circle (about 66.5 degrees North), where places like Alert, Resolute, Grise Fiord, and Eureka in Nunavut go through real stretches of continuous daylight in summer (polar day) and continuous darkness in winter (polar night). This tool detects both cases and states plainly which one is happening and roughly when it started and will end, rather than showing a blank time with no explanation.

How does this tool show the sun's direction?

Once you enter a location, orange and purple lines are drawn on the map from that point showing the compass direction of sunrise and sunset, labelled with the exact bearing in degrees. A shaded arc shows the sun's path across the sky between them. On a polar day or polar night, there is no sunrise or sunset to draw a direction for, so no lines are shown - only the location marker and the plain-language explanation.

What is golden hour and when does it start?

Golden hour is the period shortly after sunrise and before sunset when the sun is low in the sky, producing warm, soft light prized by photographers. Morning golden hour runs from sunrise until roughly an hour after; evening golden hour starts roughly an hour before sunset. During a polar day or polar night there is no golden hour, since there is no sunrise or sunset that day.

How accurate are these calculations?

The sun and moon calculations use the SunCalc library, implementing standard astronomical algorithms, and run entirely in your browser. Times are typically accurate to within 1-2 minutes. Local terrain like mountains can affect when you actually see the sun appear or disappear at the horizon. Timezones are mapped per province at the province's most populous zone, not a precise boundary lookup - Ontario, Quebec, Nunavut, British Columbia, and the Northwest Territories each genuinely span more than one real timezone.

Can I use a postal code or a full address?

Either. A postal code or a full street address is resolved locally against Canadian address data, the same data used by the Postal Code and Address Mapper and Route Optimizer tools - no external service is called for this. Clicking the map instead sends only that click's coordinates to OpenStreetMap's Nominatim to find a place name; nothing else is sent, and it isn't stored by MapTools.

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