Which country never sets the sun?
Norway. Norway, situated in the Arctic Circle, is called the Land of the Midnight Sun, where from May to late July, the sun actually never sets. This means that for around a period of 76 days,
The earth is rotating at a tilted axis relative to the sun, and during the summer months, the North Pole is angled towards our star. That's why, for several weeks, the sun never sets above the Arctic Circle. Svalbard is the place in Norway where the midnight sun occurs for the longest period.
Svalbard, Norway (for the Polar Night)
North of the Arctic Circle, periods of constant sunshine last for up to six months of the year at the North Pole. The opposite is also true for parts of the year, though. Above the Arctic Circle, the sun never rises on the day of the winter solstice (usually around December 21).
As France and the world continue to come to terms with the aftermath of France's darkest night since World War 2, it's perhaps worth remembering that France is the only Republic on which the sun never sets.
1. Alaska Gets Six Months of 24-Hour Sunlight and Darkness. Interestingly, this myth was perpetrated by our science books for many years. Only the furthest north and south points have equal parts daylight and darkness throughout the year, and Alaska isn't north enough to experience six months of either extreme.
Do you know that there is a place in the world where the sun sets at 12:43 in the night and rises again after only 40 minutes? This stunning view is witnessed at Hammerfest town in Northern Norway. Here, the sun sets at midnight and after just 40 minutes birds start chirping.
For instance, it's a common notion that Iceland is dark for months, if not half the year. The idea is that, with its location along the arctic circle, the sun simply sets one day and six months of darkness unfold.
On Svalbard, a cluster of islands between Norway and the North Pole, people wear headlamps day and night for two-and-a-half months of the year. That's because it's Polar Night — the period where the sun doesn't rise above the horizon in the Arctic.
In the Norwegian city of Tromsø, the dark hours can last for up to a month a half. If you visit Hammerfest, both the northernmost city in the world and one of the two oldest towns in Norway, the polar night lasts for almost two months.
Which country has the longest night?
Iranian people celebrate the night of the Northern Hemisphere's winter solstice as, "Yalda night", which is known to be the "longest and darkest night of the year".
Across the globe, Norway is known as the land of the midnight sun. For an extensive period of almost three months, the country experiences broad daylight. In fact, the sun tends to shine too glaringly around this time and the night is shrunk down to a span of 4 to 5 hours.

The daylight hours in Iceland on the shortest days of the year are 4-5 hours per day (December to January). Iceland's daylight hours increase by 1-3 minutes every day between December 21 and June 21.
Barrow, Alaska
From late May to late July, the sun actually does not set here, which is later compensated from the beginning of November for the next 30 days, which the sun does not rise, and is known as the polar night.
In Svalbard, Norway, which is the northern-most inhabited region of Europe, the sun shines continuously from April 10 to August 23. Visit the region and live for days, for there is no night.
Even during the June solstice there is approximately an hour where neither have sunlight. Of course, a sizable portion of Alaska is north of the Arctic Circle, so during much of the summer, the sun doesn't set on Alaska and, by association, the US. As for the rest of the year, there are a couple of hours of darkness.
Winter is long—October through April—snowy and cold.
Winter temperatures in Alaska range from 0°F / -18°C to -30°F / -35°C from November to March. Finally, while it can rain throughout Alaska's summer, May is often the driest month in Alaska, and September is typically the wettest.
In fact, the northernmost city in America – Utqiaġvik, Alaska, formerly known as Barrow – has near-constant darkness from mid- to late November until late January because the sun never rises during that 60-plus-day period. Hours of daylight (sunrise to sunset) on the winter solstice.
During summertime, most parts of Finland never experience a sun set for straight 73 days. However, in winter time, no sunlight is seen in the region. As a result, people in those areas sleep more during the winter and less in summer, due to the constant sunlight.
What country has night all day?
In Northern Norway, there is normally at least some light even at the winter solstice. On Svalbard, however, there is no light at all. In Longyearbyen there is no daylight from the 11. November to the 30.
The sun does not set for six full months on the North Pole. This phenomenon where the sun does not set for a period of time is called the midnight sun. As much as Norway is famous for Northern Lights, the Midnight Sun also captivates the attention of the travelers.
For northern latitudes, the earliest sunsets of the year happen around December 7. Think about 40 degrees latitude, so New York City; Philadelphia, Kansas City, Denver, and Reno. If you live in the southernmost U.S., or a comparable latitude (about 25 or 26 degrees N.
Located just to the west of the International Date Line, the Republic of Kiribati is one of the first places on earth to see the first rays of the rising sun.
Arctic Zone: Daylight, Darkness and Changing of the Seasons at the North Pole. What causes Seasons? The darkest time of year at the North Pole is the Winter Solstice, approximately December 21. There has been no sunlight or even twilight since early October.
After the aphotic zone, there's complete darkness. From 1,000 meters below the surface, all the way to the sea floor, no sunlight penetrates the darkness; and because photosynthesis can't take place, there are no plants, either.
The Arctic Circle marks the southern extremity of the polar day (24-hour sunlit day, often referred to as the midnight sun) and polar night (24-hour sunless night). In Finnish Lapland, the sun sets in late November and generally does not rise until mid-January. This can last as long as 50 days in northern Finland.
Samoa is one of the first countries in the world to see the sun rise and American Samoa is the last country to see the sun rise. The map shows that they are only about 100 km apart. The time difference between the two regions is 24 hours, though it takes only 20 minutes by plane to travel between them.
The town of Utqiaġvik, Alaska — the northernmost town in the US — experiences a polar night every year, beginning in mid-November and ending in mid-January. That means that once the sun sets in November, residents won't see daylight for two months.
As our planet travels around the sun, it's tilted at about 23.5 degrees. This is the reason we experience an unequal amount of sunlight in the northern vs. the southern hemispheres.
Where is it dark for 40 days and 40 nights?
Murmansk: the city where the sun doesn't rise for 40 days – in pictures.
Winter solstice, the day in December (Northern Hemisphere) and June (Southern Hemisphere) with the longest night of the year. Longest Night Service or Blue Christmas, a Western Christian tradition marking the December winter solstice.
Take June 29, 2022, which was nearly 1.6 milliseconds under 24 hours, making it the shortest day ever recorded. To those in the know, it came as no surprise, however. For more than half a century, Earth's average rotation has been gradually speeding up, slowly skimming fractions of a millisecond off our days.
The summer solstice is referred to as the start of the summer season and is the longest or biggest day of the year. The day usually falls on the 21 June and has the shortest night in the Northern Hemisphere. This happens because the earth is slightly tilted when it orbits the sun.
A green sun or green flash is a meteorological phenomena that occurs at sunrise or sunset when the sun into a clear horizon such as an ocean. Poipū Beach in Kauaʻi County on the southern side of the island of Kauaʻi in the state of Hawai, US is the best place to witness this wonderful optical phenomenon.
Places in the world with the most daylight hours
According to the World Meteorological Organization, Yuma (Arizona) is the sunniest place on earth. It has a total of 11 hours of sunlight in winter and up to 13 in summer.
- Guam. Guam is even higher on the temperature range as it's closer to the equator and it's almost not surprising to know that this country has never seen a bit of snow. ...
- Cairo, Egypt. ...
- New Delhi, India. ...
- Fiji. ...
- Surprisingly: The Dry Valleys, Antarctica.
Phoenix, Arizona
The sun shines 85 percent of the time in Phoenix, making it the sunniest city in the nation. But that sunshine means heat in the Valley of the Sun. The metro area experiences an average 110 days with triple digit heat. If you can adjust to the hot summers, there are plenty of reasons to move, though.
Then comes the Winter Solstice on December 21. This is the shortest day, with the fewest minutes of sun.
Polar night is a phenomenon in the northernmost and southernmost regions of Earth where night lasts for more than 24 hours. This occurs only inside the polar circles.
Does the sun not rise in Alaska?
In Barrow, the northernmost village in the state, there is no daylight for 64 days in the heart of the winter. The sun does not rise above the horizon. Deep winter in the northern hemisphere is summer in the south.
Alaska is the land of the fabled Midnight Sun—the natural phenomenon in which the sun is visible for 24 consecutive hours in the Arctic Circle and surrounding areas from June 12 until July 1.
- Fairbanks, Alaska. Alaska is one of the best places in the world to witness the magic of Midnight Sun. ...
- Lofoten Islands, Norway. ...
- Reykjavik, Iceland. ...
- Abisko, Sweden. ...
- Svalbard, Norway. ...
- Finnish Lapland. ...
- Nuuk, Greenland. ...
- Faroe Islands, Denmark.
The town of Tromsø, Norway, sits 200 miles north of the arctic circle, and from November to January each year, the sun doesn't rise.
| Expert Findings. Our findings: Between January 11 and March 6 as well as between October 7 and November 29, the sun first hits the top of Cadillac Mountain on the island of Mt. Desert, Maine.
West Quoddy Head
Eastport, ME is considered the easternmost city in the continental US and is often reported as the first to see the sunrise. But, Eastport is north and west of Lubec and West Quoddy Head.
Or not so much? Our Sun is 4,500,000,000 years old. That's a lot of zeroes. That's four and a half billion.
This phenomenon is commonly referred to as the Midnight Sun. The Midnight Sun occurs because of the earth's tilt in relation to its orbit around the sun. The earth's axis between the north and south poles is angled 23.5 degrees away from the plane of the earth's orbit around the sun.
In Svalbard, Norway, the northernmost inhabited region of Europe, there is no sunset from approximately 19 April to 23 August. The extreme sites are the poles, where the Sun can be continuously visible for half the year. The North Pole has midnight sun for 6 months from late March to late September.
Samoa! As you may know the international date line is as crooked as the contents of a badly packed suitcase, and Samoa, once known as the last place to see the sun set, is now the first place on the planet you can see the sun rise.
Why does the sun never set in Antarctica?
During summer, Antarctica is on the side of Earth tilted toward the sun and is in constant sunlight. In the winter, Antarctica is on the side of Earth tilted away from the sun, causing the continent to be dark.
Where can I experience the polar night? In Sweden's most northern city of Kiruna, the polar night lasts for approximately 28 twenty-four-hour periods. In the Norwegian city of Tromsø, the dark hours can last for up to a month a half.
Barrow, Alaska
From late May to late July, the sun actually does not set here, which is later compensated from the beginning of November for the next 30 days, which the sun does not rise, and is known as the polar night. This also means that the country remains in darkness during the harsh months of winter.
Alaska is not actually dark for six months of the year, even in our northern cities. The entire state experiences varying hours of sunlight and darkness all year long. The long, dark hours of the winter season are due to Alaska's location on the globe.
On Svalbard, a cluster of islands between Norway and the North Pole, people wear headlamps day and night for two-and-a-half months of the year. That's because it's Polar Night — the period where the sun doesn't rise above the horizon in the Arctic.
Residents of Northern Norway, however, might take issue with that because, just as the sun doesn't fully set for months at a time in the summer – the Midnight Sun for which Norway is famous – in winter the opposite is true. When is the polar night in Norway?
Japan is called the "Land of the Rising Sun" because the country is considered to lie close to where the sun rises.
A green sun or green flash is a meteorological phenomena that occurs at sunrise or sunset when the sun into a clear horizon such as an ocean. Poipū Beach in Kauaʻi County on the southern side of the island of Kauaʻi in the state of Hawai, US is the best place to witness this wonderful optical phenomenon.
Although the "Land of the Rising Sun" experiences it a little later, Japan is on the western side of the Pacific Ocean and ushers in the New Year considerably earlier than the rest of the world. For example, Japan's sunrise is two hours before Thailand, nine hours earlier than England, and 14 hours preceding New York.
Antarctica is the coldest, windiest, harshest continent, and with little precipitation (roughly 2 inches per year) is the driest place on earth.
How long is a day in Antarctica?
12 hours of daylight followed by 12 hours of darkness over almost the whole of the planet.
How cold is Antarctica in winter? In winter, sea ice envelops the continent and Antarctica is plunged into months of darkness. The monthly mean temperature at the South Pole in winter hovers around -60°C (-76°F). Along the coast, winter temperatures range between −15 and −20 °C (-5 and −4 °F).