Sunrise & sunset times in Sanya

Sun and moon in Sanya

Landscape and street photographers who plan around the light rely on the daily sun and moon schedule for Sanya, China. This page shows live sunrise, sunset, solar noon, day length, morning and evening golden hour, blue hour, dawn and dusk, plus the current moon phase and the moonrise and moonset times for Sanya. Every value is calculated in the browser for the date you pick and shown in the local time of Sanya, China. Sanya sits at roughly 18.25 degrees north, in the northern hemisphere, so it sees very little seasonal change, with day length staying close to twelve hours all year and a short, fast twilight after sunset. Because the length of the day changes with the seasons, the exact sunrise and sunset in Sanya shift from week to week. Pick any date with the date picker to see how the light will fall on a specific day, which is handy for planning a shoot, an event, a wedding, a flight or simply the best moment to catch the last warm light of the evening. Golden hour, that soft warm window near sunrise and sunset, is the favourite of photographers in Sanya. Blue hour, the cooler stretch just before sunrise and just after sunset, is ideal for cityscapes and long exposures. Combined with the moon phase and moon times, this gives you a complete picture of natural light over Sanya, China for any day of the year.

What time is sunset in Sanya today?

The sun sets in Sanya at 18:30 today, Friday, 2 October 2026, in Sanya's own local time. The warm light starts well before that: evening golden hour opens at 18:01, giving 29 minutes of low golden light before the sun reaches the horizon. Sunset is not the end of the light either. Last light, the moment usable daylight ends at civil dusk, follows 22 minutes later at 18:51, and the sky is properly dark at 19:42, 1h 12m after sunset.

Tomorrow the sun sets at 18:29 in Sanya. That is 50 seconds earlier than today. Over the coming week sunset moves 5 minutes 38 seconds earlier.

Is the day getting longer or shorter in Sanya right now?

Sanya gets 11h 57m of daylight today, from sunrise to sunset. Tomorrow will be 1 minute 1 second shorter. Over the next seven days Sanya loses 7 minutes 6 seconds of daylight.

That pace is not constant. In Sanya the day length changes fastest around March, near the equinox, when it moves by about 1 minute 2 seconds per day, and it slows almost to a stop at the solstices in June and December. The word solstice means exactly that: the sun standing still.

When are the earliest and latest sunrise and sunset in Sanya?

The earliest sunset of 2026 in Sanya falls on 24 November at 18:03, 27 days before the December solstice, and the latest on 5 July at 19:22.

Sunrise runs on its own schedule: earliest on 5 June at 06:05, latest on 18 January at 07:16, 28 days after the December solstice. The four dates in the table below do not line up with the solstices, and they are not supposed to. Earth's orbit is slightly elliptical and its axis is tilted, so the sun runs a few minutes fast or slow against clock time through the year. That offset, the equation of time, is what pushes the earliest sunset ahead of the shortest day and the latest sunrise behind it.

How long does twilight last in Sanya?

First light in Sanya arrives 22 minutes before sunrise today, at 06:10. After sunset the light hangs on for another 22 minutes, until 18:51. That evening stretch is not the same all year in Sanya: it runs from 22 minutes at its shortest, in September, to 24 minutes at its longest, in June. The lower the angle at which the sun crosses the horizon, the longer twilight lasts, which is why dusk is a slow affair at high latitudes and abrupt near the equator.

How high does the sun get in Sanya?

At midday on the June solstice the sun stands 84.8 degrees above the horizon in Sanya. On the December solstice it climbs only 48.3 degrees. The midday sun stays high enough all year that noon shadows in Sanya are always shorter than the object casting them, about 0.89 times their height at the lowest point of the year.

Twice a year, on 12 May and 31 July, the midday sun over Sanya comes within half a degree of straight overhead, reaching 89.99 degrees at its highest. On those days an upright post casts almost no shadow at solar noon, which is why they are sometimes called zero shadow days. It can only happen between the tropics, where the sun passes directly over a place at all.

Frequently asked questions about Sanya

Data and methodology: every time on this page is computed from Sanya's coordinates with SunCalc, an open source astronomy library, not estimated or looked up from a table. Coordinates 18.25, 109.51, time zone Asia/Shanghai. Accurate to about a minute for a flat, unobstructed horizon; terrain, tall buildings and atmospheric conditions can shift the moment the sun is actually visible by a few minutes. Full method on methodology.

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Sun and moon times for places close to Sanya. Sunrise and sunset shift as you move east, west, north or south.

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