Prayer Times Calculator

Today's Sun-Arc Clock

Top Cities

Tap a city to recompute the sun-arc clock for that latitude.

Today's Prayer Times in Mecca (ISNA (North America))

Compare with Solar Noon and Blue Hour for civil twilight comparisons.

The Meeus Prayer-Time Formula

Twilight Angle Conventions

No saved schedules yet. Tap "Save Schedule" to store up to eight city + method configurations in localStorage.

How to Read the Sun-Arc Clock

1. Pick your city from the dropdown. The lat/long and timezone are pre-filled; the calculator computes today's sun declination and equation of time from JavaScript's Date.
2. Choose a twilight-angle method (ISNA 15°/15°, MWL 18°/17°, Egyptian 19.5°/17.5°, or Karachi 18°/18°) to match your local mosque's schedule.
3. Toggle Shafi'i (1× shadow) or Hanafi (2× shadow) for Asr. The Asr marker shifts on the arc.
4. Read the six markers around the sun arc: Fajr below the eastern horizon, sunrise on the east horizon, Dhuhr at the meridian, Asr in the afternoon arc, Maghrib at the west horizon, Isha below the west horizon.
5. Save the schedule. The last eight configurations live in your browser localStorage for quick recall.

A Brief History of Salat Times

In 2026, a Muslim software engineer in Toronto opens her laptop at 4:47 AM after Suhoor during Ramadan and needs to know exactly when Fajr ends so she can stop eating. She also needs Isha for that night to plan Taraweeh. Prayer Times Calculator computes both — and Dhuhr, Asr, Maghrib in between — from her latitude, longitude, the day-of-year, and the angle convention her local mosque follows (ISNA, MWL, Egyptian General, or Karachi).

The Islamic prayer schedule is anchored astronomically to the sun, not to a fixed wall-clock time. Five obligatory daily prayers (Salat al-fard) are observed: Fajr at dawn before sunrise, Dhuhr when the sun crosses the meridian, Asr in the afternoon, Maghrib just after sunset, and Isha at night. The exact moments are defined by sun altitude: Fajr begins when the sun is a set number of degrees below the eastern horizon (true dawn, also known as al-fajr al-sadiq), and Isha begins when the sun reaches the same altitude on the western side (or when the red afterglow disappears, depending on madhhab).

Different schools and regional authorities use different sun-altitude angles. The Muslim World League (MWL), formed in Mecca in 1962, codified 18° for Fajr and 17° for Isha — the latter slightly higher because the red afterglow lingers. The Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), founded 1963 in the United States, uses symmetric 15° for both. The Egyptian General Authority of Survey, established 1932 in Cairo, uses 19.5°/17.5°. The University of Islamic Sciences, Karachi (1973), uses 18°/18°. This calculator surfaces all four conventions so the user matches the local mosque.

Asr time is calculated by shadow length, not sun altitude. The two main conventions: Shafi'i (also Maliki, Hanbali) defines Asr as starting when an object's shadow equals its own length plus the noon shadow; Hanafi defines it as starting when the shadow equals twice the object's length plus the noon shadow. The difference can be 60-90 minutes; Pakistani, Bangladeshi, and Indian mosques following the Hanafi school will pray Asr noticeably later than ISNA mosques in North America.

The astronomical calculation traces to Al-Khwarizmi's 820 CE tables, Al-Battani's 858-929 CE refinements, and Ibn al-Shatir's 14th-century Damascene corrections. Modern implementations use the equation of time and the sun's declination from the IAU 1976 ephemeris, with the position-of-the-sun formula popularised by Jean Meeus (Astronomical Algorithms, 1991). This tool implements the standard Meeus algorithm: it computes the equation of time E and the sun's declination δ for the day, then derives Dhuhr = 12 − E/60 in local solar time, applies longitude correction, and works back from Dhuhr to find Fajr and forward to find Isha using the chosen twilight angle.

At high latitudes — above roughly 48.5° N or S — the sun never goes far enough below the horizon in summer for Fajr and Isha to be astronomically defined. Stockholm in June, Edmonton in July, Reykjavik in July all face this issue. The Fiqh Council of North America issued a 2009 ruling allowing two acceptable approximations: One-Seventh (the night is divided into sevenths and Fajr/Isha are placed at the seventh boundary), or Angle-Based (the proportional method used in this tool, which keeps the angle valid until the sun fails to dip, then interpolates linearly between Maghrib and sunrise). The same problem occurs at the South Pole in our winter.

Prayer times bridge worship and city life. A factory in Jeddah will pause production for Dhuhr. The Indian government schedules Lok Sabha sittings around Friday Jumu'ah. Amazon's Riyadh fulfilment centre staggers shifts around Maghrib. Halal grocery websites in Toronto highlight Maghrib for breaking fast during Ramadan. This calculator outputs both the prayer schedule and the underlying sun arc so users can correlate the religious obligations with the day's civil rhythm.