The sun and the clock in Calgary (2026)
Calgary lies at 114.1°W. Its time zone, UTC−6, is built around the 90°W meridian. The 24.1° gap between them means the clock runs roughly 96 minutes ahead of the sun: solar noon arrives at about 13:36 rather than 12:00. The zone holds UTC−6 all year — there is no daylight saving here.
The longest day of 2026 is 22 June, with 16h 33m of daylight. The shortest is 22 December, with 7h 54m. The swing between them is 8h 39m. This is the latitude band where the difference between summer and winter evenings is most obvious.
The earliest sunrise and the latest sunset do not land on the longest day. In Calgary the sun comes up earliest on 18 June at 05:21, while the latest sunset waits until 26 June at 21:55. The equation of time is what separates them: the Earth's elliptical orbit and axial tilt move solar noon back and forth by several minutes over the year.
The sky stays usably light for a while after the sun goes down. In Calgary that civil twilight runs about 33 minutes at the equinox, stretching to 47 minutes at the solstice.
Every figure in this section is computed from the city's own latitude, longitude and IANA time zone using NOAA solar algorithms (Spencer, 1971), accurate to about ±2 arcminutes below 65° latitude.
