Which Country Sees the Sunrise First?

Which country sees the sunrise first depends on which morning you mean. Kiribati’s Line Islands step onto the new calendar date before any other country. On January 1 the first land sunrise is an Antarctic headland. The first place with people living on it is Pitt Island, in New Zealand.

A list that names one country is talking about the earliest clock. The first look at the sun is a separate morning, and the shore where people live is a third. The rest of this page matches your question to the right morning, then covers the date line, each continent, the United States, and the air that can move the minute.

Three Ways the New Day Can Start

A new civil day begins at local midnight, on the clock the local government has chosen. Sunrise is a different event. It is the moment the upper edge of the sun sits on the horizon. On January 1 those two events fall in different parts of the Pacific.

The times below come from the Naval Observatory guide to the first sunrise of the year. Read the UTC column when you line places up. Local clocks do not share one offset, and summer daylight time can move a civil clock an hour away from the offset in a published table.

South East Point’s sunrise is 6:30 a.m. on a clock 14 hours ahead of UTC, the pairing printed as 16:30 UTC. The Observatory’s one-day sun table for Christmas Island in Kiribati uses that same zone, 14.0 hours east of Greenwich. Count back six and a half hours and midnight on the island falls at 10:00 UTC on December 31. That new date is already two hours old when the sun first clears the horizon over the far southern ocean at 12:00 UTC, and it is five hours and five minutes old when the first land sunrise arrives at 15:05 UTC.

Where Does the Sun Rise First on January 1?

On January 1 the south is tilted toward the sun, so the sun stays up across most of Antarctica and the North Pole stays in the dark. If you only want to know where the sun is already in the sky after the year begins, that place is Antarctica, because the sun never left.

A sunrise needs a sunset first. The earliest one, in local time, sits on the International Date Line where that line meets the boundary between night and day. That crossing is at 180° longitude and 66° 5′ south, near the Antarctic Circle, in open ocean with no land nearby. Local time there is taken as 12 hours ahead of UTC, and the sun dips under the horizon and comes back almost at once, at local midnight. The instant is 12:00 UTC on December 31.

Three spots of land west of the date line matter next, and only some of them see a sunrise on a given January 1.

1. Young Island: A sunrise is possible at 12:23 a.m. local time on the northern tip, at 162° 17′ east in the Balleny Islands, which is 13:23 UTC on December 31. The island reaches 66° 13′ south. The chance of a sunset there on December 31 is about 10 to 15 percent, and without a sunset there is no sunrise to claim.
2. Dibble Glacier headland: At 135° 53′ east, between the Dibble Glacier at 134° 37′ east and Victor Bay, the sun rises at 12:05 a.m. local time on January 1, which is 15:05 UTC on December 31.
3. Northern tip of the Dibble Glacier: If you want a sunrise that still happens when the air bends the light more than usual, this is the spot, near 66° 0′ south and 134° 37′ east. The sun is up at 12:25 a.m. local time, or 15:22 UTC on December 31.

Young Island comes before the glacier only when that sunset happens. On the other January 1 dates, the headland at 15:05 UTC is the first land sunrise. Farther south than 66° 5′ the sun does not set, so those camps have daylight with no sunrise at all.

Which Country Sees the Sunrise First From Shore?

A shore with a town on it is a third question. It does not land on the island many travel lists name, and the UTC column is what sorts the claimants.

Kahuitara Point on Pitt Island

The first populated land on the January 1 list is Kahuitara Point on Pitt Island, in the Chatham Islands, which belong to New Zealand. The point faces the date line from the west, and its sunrise is the one to circle if you want neighbors rather than a reef or an ice coast.

• The point: Kahuitara Point sits at 44° 16′ south, 176° 9′ west.
• The clock: Sunrise is at 4:50 a.m. local time on January 1.
• The sky: That moment is 16:05 UTC on December 31, twenty minutes after Caroline Island and 25 minutes before Kiritimati.

Caroline Island Behind the Reef

In 1995 Kiribati moved the date line so the whole country would sit on its western side, and the line now reaches as far east as 150°, farther east than Honolulu. On the strength of that bend, Kiribati put forward Caroline Island, at 10° 0′ south and 150° 15′ west, as the first land to see the sun. The sun rises there at 5:45 a.m. local time, which is 15:45 UTC on December 31. That is after the Antarctic headland and before Pitt Island.

Caroline Island is an atoll of 22 small islets stretched over 11 km, behind a very shallow reef. You reach it by shallow draft boat or seaplane, and that tropical reef is not an easier trip than the Antarctic coast. No permanent town sits there to watch. The name Millennium Island comes from the celebrations at the start of 2000. It marks a calendar claim, not a settlement.

Sunrise on Kiritimati

The inhabited Kiribati sunrise is at South East Point on Christmas Island, the island also called Kiritimati, and the most southeasterly of Kiribati’s inhabited islands. Do not mix it up with Australia’s Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean. Sunrise at South East Point is 6:30 a.m. local time on January 1, paired with 16:30 UTC on December 31.

• Against Pitt Island: Pitt’s sunrise at 16:05 UTC is 25 minutes earlier, even though Pitt’s local clock reads 4:50 a.m. and Kiritimati’s reads 6:30 a.m.
• Against the main islands: New Zealand’s Table Cape, at 39° 6′ south and 178° 0′ east, sees the sun at 4:45 a.m. local time, which is 16:45 UTC, forty minutes after Pitt Island.

The two local clocks at Pitt Island and Kiritimati differ by an hour and forty minutes, while the UTC times differ by 25 minutes. The sky follows the UTC times. Table Cape’s local hour looks early only because that clock is not on Kiritimati’s 14-hour offset.

The Date Line and the First Calendar Day

The date line is an imaginary cut where the calendar jumps by one day. It has no force in international law. It is a convenience, placed near 180° from Greenwich because that belt is mostly empty ocean, with bends where a country did not want its own islands on two dates.

The 1884 conference in Washington made Greenwich the prime meridian and proposed a universal day that would not push aside local time where local time was useful. Midnight in Greenwich and midnight on the local clock both stayed in use. At midnight UTC on January 1 the sun is rising along one long line, from about 650 km east of Kerguelen Island in the Indian Ocean, through the Nicobar Islands and across Asia, and out over the Arctic. The whole line shares one sunrise, so no town on it is first.

Sailors met the hard version of this on the first voyage around the world. Magellan’s crew came home to find that one more day had passed than they had counted. The line exists so you correct that tally on purpose.

HOW THE DATE LINE MOVED

1. 1845: The Philippines move from the eastern side of the date line, the side they shared with the United States while ships came from Spanish America, to the western side as travel shifts toward the route around Africa.
2. 1867: The United States buys Alaska. The line, which had left Russian Alaska on the western side because travelers came by way of Siberia, is drawn to the west of Alaska.
3. 1921: The British Admiralty draws the line that most maps still follow, with later local bends added on top.
4. 1995: Kiribati shifts a long eastern bulge so the whole country shares one calendar day. The line runs as far east as 150° west.
5. 2011: Samoa’s clock changes under a statute that starts at midnight on Thursday, 29 December 2011.

Later bends are described in the Observatory’s history of the date line. Samoa wrote its change into the International Date Line Act 2011, which took effect at midnight on Thursday, 29 December 2011, and defined standard time as 13 hours ahead of UTC. The islands stayed where they were. The date on the calendar is what moved.

One old pairing is worth retiring before you plan a trip around it. A last sunset of December 31 is still given for Falealupo, Samoa, at 13° 25′ south and 172° 45′ west, at 7:00 p.m. local time, paired with 6:00 a.m. UTC on January 1. A 7:00 p.m. clock paired with 6:00 a.m. UTC the next morning is an 11-hour lag behind UTC. The 2011 law puts Samoa 13 hours ahead of UTC, so that sunset line matches the older side of the date line, not the clock Samoa uses now.

Sunrise Times on Each Continent

The same January 1 method, at sea level and with the standard bend of the air, gives a first sunrise for each continent. Where two rows share a landmass, the first includes offshore points and the next is the mainland row as the Observatory labels it. UTC times with no December tag fall on January 1.

Cape Race at 11:17 UTC sees the sun before Cape Breton at 11:41 UTC, even though Cape Breton’s clock reads 7:41 a.m. and Cape Race’s reads 7:47 a.m. Those pairs put Cape Race three and a half hours behind UTC and Cape Breton four hours behind. The two Brazilian capes, Cabo de Sao Tome and Punta de Monsaras, share one minute, 5:04 a.m. local and 08:04 UTC.

Every row assumes sea level. Near a coast, 30 m of height, 100 ft, shifts sunrise by about 1 minute. A 1000 m summit 100 km west of a sea-level sunrise can see the sun at the same time as that beach, because the peak looks over the curve of the earth.

Sunrise Times for U.S. States and Territories

Civil time zones in the United States follow the statute the Department of Transportation administers. On the ocean and in Antarctica, where no country sets the clock, local time is the zone of the nearest meridian that is a multiple of 15°.

WHERE THE U.S. SUNRISE LANDS

• Wake Island: Peacock Point, at 19° 16′ north and 166° 35′ east, sees the sun at 7:25 a.m. local time, which is 19:25 UTC on December 31. Aside from an occasional government employee or contractor, the island is uninhabited.
• Guam: Inarajan, at 13° 17′ north and 144° 45′ east, sees it at 6:45 a.m. local time, or 20:45 UTC on December 31, about 3 minutes after the peak of Lamlam Mountain. This is the first inhabited U.S. land on January 1.
• The states: With territories left out, the earliest sunrise is nearly 15.5 hours later, at 7:05 a.m. Eastern Standard Time on the summit of Cadillac Mountain in Maine, at 44° 21′ north and 68° 13′ west. That instant is 12:05 UTC. Lubec, Maine, at 44° 50′ north and 67° 0′ west, and Siasconset on Nantucket, at 41° 15′ north and 69° 58′ west, match that minute at sea level. At 7:06 a.m. Eastern Standard Time, 12:06 UTC, the sun is up on Katahdin in Maine, at 45° 54′ north and 68° 55′ west, and on Miami Beach, at 25° 47′ north and 80° 16′ west.

Cadillac is a summit and Lubec is a shore, and they still share a minute on this date because they are different places, not a cliff stacked on one beach. Height matters when the high ground and the water are close: 30 m near a coast is worth about 1 minute. A Maine summit does not jump ahead of Guam.

What Can Shift the Minute of Sunrise?

The air bends sunlight. At the horizon, at sea level, the average bend is 34 arcminutes, less than one degree. You catch the upper edge of the sun while its center is still below the horizon in pure geometry. Standard almanac times build that bend in. Aside from the times set by His Majesty’s Nautical Almanac Office, most other published times for these places come out later, which is what happens when the bend is left out.

In January the sun meets the horizon at a shallower angle as you go south, so the same bend moves the clock by more minutes. Near the equator the sun climbs steeply, and the gap between the geometric crossing and the moment you see the disk is only a few minutes. Near the Antarctic Circle the sun can skim just under that geometric line and stay in view. The sun does not appear to set in a band 25 to 30 arcminutes of latitude north of the Antarctic Circle on January 1, which is why some high southern camps have daylight with no sunrise and no sunset.

The 34 arcminute figure is an average, and it moves with the weather. On a morning at 32°F (0°C), with everything else the same, you see the sun about 25 seconds earlier than on a morning at 86°F (30°C). Near the equator there is a 32 percent chance the time is off by more than 38 seconds, which is why these tables are printed to the nearest minute. At the southern edge of the January 1 sunrise, there is a 32 percent chance the event falls more than 18 km north or south of the predicted spot.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Japan the First Country to See the Sunrise?

Japan has long been called the land of the rising sun. Morning does reach Japan, on a later hour of a calendar date that has already started in the central Pacific. The January 1 order runs from the date line and the Antarctic coast through the Pacific islands, and those shores come well before Japan.

How Do You Check the Sunrise Where You Live?

You can look up any town with the NOAA solar calculator for any place, set the date, and read the sunrise it prints. The calculator warns that air pressure and weather can move the real minute away from the printed one. Near the poles, run the exact year you care about, because those minutes shift from one year to the next.

Does the Sun Still Rise in the East in Kiribati?

The islands never moved, and the sun still comes up in the east over the same lagoons. In 1995 Kiribati changed the date on its eastern islands so the whole country would share one side of the date line. The date and the hour on the clock are what changed. Dawn still arrives from the east.

Does Samoa Greet the New Year Before Kiribati?

Samoa standard time is 13 hours ahead of UTC under its 2011 date line law. The Line Islands run 14 hours ahead, which is the offset in the pairing of a 6:30 a.m. sunrise with 16:30 UTC. Midnight therefore reaches Kiritimati before it reaches Samoa. Samoa’s move took the country off the side of the line tied to that old last sunset. The Line Islands still open the date.

Does the January 1 Sunrise Stay in the Same Spot?

The January 1 sunrise near Antarctica moves from year to year because the calendar year and the sun’s path from one spring equinox to the next are not the same length, and neither is a whole number of days. From 1949 through 2008, the sun’s latitude at midnight UTC on January 1 ranged from 23° 0′ 43.5″ south to 23° 6′ 22.4″ south. Away from the poles, a sunrise table for one year still serves the next.

A midnight toast in the Line Islands falls at 10:00 UTC on December 31. The first land light on that date is the Antarctic headland at 15:05 UTC, Caroline Island follows at 15:45 UTC with no town on the reef, and Kahuitara Point, where people live, follows at 16:05 UTC. Use those UTC marks when the local hours disagree.