The sun and the clock in Nanjing (2026)
Nanjing lies at 118.8°E. Its time zone, UTC+8, is built around the 120°E meridian. The 1.2° gap between them means the clock runs roughly 5 minutes ahead of the sun: solar noon arrives at about 12:05 rather than 12:00. The zone holds UTC+8 all year — there is no daylight saving here.
The longest day of 2026 is 22 June, with 14h 15m of daylight. The shortest is 22 December, with 10h 3m. The swing between them is 4h 12m. At this latitude the seasons are visible in the clock, but never dramatic.
The earliest sunrise and the latest sunset do not land on the longest day. In Nanjing the sun comes up earliest on 12 June at 04:58, while the latest sunset waits until 1 July at 19:15. 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 Nanjing that civil twilight runs about 24 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.