Lightphase

Seven bands of light, each named in words.

Every phase is a band of the sun’s angle. The sky beside each one is how it looks, and the name is what it means, so nothing depends on telling colors apart.

How each threshold is defined
  1. Daylightabove 35°The sun is high. Light is flat and top-down, shadows are short and hard. Outside the Lightphase working window.
  2. 35° Window6° to 35°Still low enough to be directional, but with fuller color and more contrast than golden hour. The long, workable middle of the day at either end.
  3. Golden Hourthe horizon to 6°Warm, low, strongly directional sunlight. Long shadows, raking side light, and the shallowest angle direct sun ever reaches.
  4. Civil Twilight−6° to the horizonBright twilight. Enough ambient light to expose a scene handheld, with no direct sun and almost no shadow.
  5. Nautical Twilight−12° to −6°Deep blue sky. Silhouettes read cleanly against a faintly visible horizon. The window most people mean by "blue hour".
  6. Astronomical Twilight−18° to −12°The darkest twilight. Stars remain prominent and the sky reads as black to the eye, but the horizon is beginning to separate on a long exposure.
  7. Nightbelow −18°The sun is far enough below the horizon that it contributes no usable light. Full dark for photographic purposes.