Does the Sun Rise in the East? Only Twice a Year
The sun rises in the east on about two days a year. Every other morning it comes up somewhere north or south of east, and by the solstices it is far enough off that you would not describe it as east at all without the rule drilled into you at school.
In New York on the June solstice the sun rises at a compass bearing of 58 degrees, which is northeast. On the December solstice it rises at 121 degrees, which is east-southeast. Those two points are 63 degrees apart on the horizon, about a seventh of the way around the compass.
The Swing by Latitude
Sunrise bearings, in compass degrees, where 90 is due east.
| Place | March equinox | June solstice | December solstice | Total swing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Quito (0°) | 90 | 67 | 113 | 46° |
| Miami (26°N) | 90 | 63 | 116 | 53° |
| New York (41°N) | 89 | 58 | 121 | 63° |
| London (52°N) | 89 | 49 | 128 | 79° |
| Stockholm (59°N) | 89 | 37 | 139 | 102° |
| Fairbanks (65°N) | 88 | 15 | 155 | 140° |
At the equator the swing is smallest and still 46 degrees wide. At Fairbanks the sun rises almost due north in June and south-southeast in December, which is why “east” is close to useless as a description that far north.
The cause is the 23.4 degree tilt of Earth’s axis. Over a year the sun’s declination moves between 23.4 degrees north and 23.4 degrees south of the celestial equator, and the sunrise point moves along the horizon with it. How much horizon that translates into depends on the angle the sun’s daily path makes with the horizon, which flattens as you go toward the poles. The same geometry sets how long twilight lasts and how long golden hour runs.
The Equinox Is Close but Not Exact
On the March equinox in New York the sun rises at 89.5 degrees, half a degree north of due east. In Fairbanks it rises at 88.4 degrees, more than a degree and a half off. The number drifts further from 90 the further north you go, and it is never exactly 90 on the equinox anywhere except very close to the equator.
Two things push it off.
Sunrise is defined as the moment the upper edge of the sun first appears, not the moment its center reaches the horizon. The sun is about half a degree wide, so its center is still below the horizon when we call it sunrise.
The atmosphere bends light passing through it, which lifts the sun’s apparent position by roughly half a degree near the horizon. Together these mean sunrise happens when the sun is geometrically about 0.83 degrees below the horizon, and a sun that low is still tracking north as it climbs.
The upshot is that the sun rises truly due east a day or so before the March equinox and a day or so after the September one, not on the equinox itself. In New York in 2026 the closest mornings are March 19 and September 24, while the equinoxes fall on March 20 and September 23. The same refraction is why the day with equal light and dark, sometimes called the equilux, is also a few days off the equinox rather than on it.
What This Is Useful For
Knowing the bearing is the difference between a window that gets direct morning light in June and one that does not. A room facing 90 degrees gets sun near the equinoxes and loses it at both solstices. A room facing 60 degrees gets a stripe of it every summer morning in the northern middle latitudes and nothing in December.
Street grids get the same treatment. A city laid out on a bearing that matches a sunrise or sunset direction lines the sun up down the middle of its avenues on two dates each year, which is what produces the henge effect people photograph in gridded cities. The dates depend entirely on the grid’s bearing and the city’s latitude, so they are different everywhere and worth calculating rather than borrowing from another city.
Solar panels, greenhouses, and anything else placed by where the light falls have the same dependency. The bearing is not a constant, and using the equinox value all year is a 30 degree error at the solstices in the middle latitudes.
Where to Get the Number
Every location page lists the sunrise and sunset bearing for that place, as a compass direction and in degrees, alongside the times. The free API returns them as sunrise_azimuth and sunset_azimuth for any coordinate and date, and sun_azimuth for the sun’s position at solar noon, if you want to compute alignments yourself.
The numbers in the table above are calculated for sea level. Terrain changes what you actually see: a ridge to your east delays sunrise and moves the visible sunrise point along the skyline, which is a related but separate effect covered in how elevation affects sunset times.