The sun and the clock in Nashville (2026)
Nashville lies at 86.8°W. Its time zone, UTC−6, is built around the 90°W meridian. The 3.2° gap between them means the clock runs roughly 13 minutes behind the sun: solar noon arrives at about 11:47 rather than 12:00. Under daylight saving the clocks move 60 minutes forward, widening the gap to 47 minutes and pushing solar noon to 12:47.
The longest day of 2026 is 22 June, with 14h 37m 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 Nashville the sun comes up earliest on 14 June at 05:29, while the latest sunset waits until 30 June at 20:08. 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 Nashville 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.