How far your clock is from the sun.In Seville the sun is highest at 2:30 PM in July. In Recife it is 11:26 AM.

A world map of towns and cities as points of light. Spain burns violet, the American Midwest and western edges of time zones glow orange and red, and places near their zone's center stay white. — Each point is a town or city of 1,000 people or more, colored by how far mean solar noon falls from 12:00 on its clock.

The same map in January, with the summer hour gone. — Each point is a town or city of 1,000 people or more, colored by how far mean solar noon falls from 12:00 on its clock.

Choose a city.

Madrid. The sun is highest at 2:21 PM on the clock in mid-July, and at 1:24 PM in mid-January.

Where the sun comes latest.

Cities of 300,000 people or more
City	Solar noon, mid-July	Mid-January
Seville, Spain	2:30 PM	1:33 PM
Córdoba, Spain	2:25 PM	1:28 PM
Valladolid, Spain	2:25 PM	1:28 PM
Málaga, Spain	2:24 PM	1:27 PM
Madrid, Spain	2:21 PM	1:24 PM
Bilbao, Spain	2:18 PM	1:21 PM
Nantes, France	2:12 PM	1:16 PM
Murcia, Spain	2:11 PM	1:14 PM
Zaragoza, Spain	2:10 PM	1:13 PM
Valencia, Spain	2:08 PM	1:11 PM
Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain	2:08 PM	1:11 PM
Alicante, Spain	2:08 PM	1:11 PM
Lhasa, China	2:02 PM	2:05 PM
Toulouse, France	2:00 PM	1:04 PM
Lhoka, China	1:59 PM	2:02 PM

Where the sun comes earliest.

Cities of 300,000 people or more
City	Solar noon, mid-January	Mid-July
Shuangyashan, China	11:25 AM	11:21 AM
Jixi, China	11:25 AM	11:22 AM
Qitaihe, China	11:25 AM	11:22 AM
João Pessoa, Brazil	11:29 AM	11:25 AM
Hegang, China	11:28 AM	11:25 AM
Jiamusi, China	11:28 AM	11:25 AM
Olinda, Brazil	11:29 AM	11:25 AM
Paulista, Brazil	11:29 AM	11:25 AM
Recife, Brazil	11:29 AM	11:26 AM
Jaboatão dos Guararapes, Brazil	11:29 AM	11:26 AM
Natal, Brazil	11:30 AM	11:27 AM
Mudanjiang, China	11:31 AM	11:27 AM
Yanji, China	11:31 AM	11:28 AM
Maceió, Brazil	11:32 AM	11:29 AM
Guwahati, India	11:32 AM	11:29 AM

Why a clock and the sun disagree.

Time zones follow borders, not the sun

A zone is drawn by a government, and a wide country often keeps one clock. Spain sits on about the same longitude as London and keeps the clock of Berlin. China keeps one official time across about 60 degrees of longitude, so in Kashgar solar noon falls near 3 PM by Beijing time. Many people there keep Xinjiang time, two hours behind, which is what this map uses.

Summer time adds an hour

Daylight saving time moves every clock in a zone forward, so solar noon falls an hour later on the clock from spring to autumn. That hour is what permanent daylight saving time would keep all year. See it by state.

The sun itself drifts by a few minutes

Earth's tilted axis and its slightly oval orbit make solar noon run up to 14 minutes late in February and 16 minutes early in November. Astronomers call this the equation of time. See the Sun's path for any place.

Find solar noon today, where you are.

Sol gives the sun's highest moment for the place you choose, along with its height and the day's length.

See today's solar noon See the sun's path

Sol's Sky tab at dusk in New York, the glow arching up from the horizon.

Figures are for calendar 2027 unless a heading says otherwise, worked out with NOAA's solar equations and the IANA time zone database (version 2026e) at each place's coordinates from GeoNames. Sunrise and sunset put the sun's center 0.833° below a flat horizon, so hills move a real place by minutes. The map uses mean solar noon, without the equation of time; the tables include it. Download the figures.