The sun and the clock in Erbil (2026)
Erbil lies at 44.0°E. Its time zone, UTC+3, is built around the 45°E meridian. The two very nearly coincide: solar noon — the moment the sun is highest — falls at about 12:04, which is as close to true solar time as a zone this wide can get. The zone holds UTC+3 all year — there is no daylight saving here.
The longest day of 2026 is 22 June, with 14h 38m of daylight. The shortest is 22 December, with 9h 42m. The swing between them is 4h 56m. 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 Erbil the sun comes up earliest on 14 June at 04:46, while the latest sunset waits until 30 June at 19:25. 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 Erbil that civil twilight runs about 26 minutes at the equinox.
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.
