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Last third of the night calculator

Divide the night between Maghrib and Fajr into three, and see when the last third starts and ends for your location and date.

Place and the night beginning on

Positive north, negative south

Positive east, negative west

Hours ahead of UTC at that place on that date, daylight saving included

Calculation method

Widely used across Europe and much of the world. A reasonable default if you are unsure.

Show nothing rather than estimate. Ask your local mosque what they follow.

Methods disagree with one another by up to twenty minutes at Fajr and Isha, because they disagree about which angle of twilight marks the boundary. Follow whichever your local mosque follows rather than whichever gives the answer you prefer.

Clock

Last third of the night

Enter a location and date, or tap Use my location, to see where the night divides.

How the night is divided

The night is taken as the span from Maghrib to the following morning’s Fajr, and split into three equal parts. The last of those three is what people usually mean by the last third of the night.

Note what the night is not: it is not sunset to sunrise. Fajr arrives well before the sun does, often an hour and a half earlier, so measuring to sunrise would make the night longer than it is and push every boundary later. At a British latitude in winter that mistake moves the last third by more than an hour.

Which night the date refers to

A night belongs to the evening it starts in. Choosing the 21st gives you the night that begins at Maghrib on the 21st and ends at Fajr on the 22nd, so the calculation looks at both days and takes the later Fajr. It is a small difference, Fajr shifts by around a minute a day, but it is the difference between measuring this night and the last one.

How much it moves through the year

A great deal, at higher latitudes. In London a night in December runs about fourteen hours, so each third is nearly five and the final one starts a little after one in the morning. In June the whole night is short enough that each third is under two hours. Nearer the equator the figure barely changes at all.

Where the calculation stops

If either end of the night is missing, no Maghrib, or no Fajr. There is no span to divide, and the tool reports that rather than estimating. That happens on summer dates above roughly 48 degrees of latitude. The conventions communities use in those places are offered as a setting, and whichever you choose will move the boundaries with it.

Questions

Is the night measured from sunset to sunrise?
No, from Maghrib to the following Fajr. That is the span these divisions are normally worked from, and it matters: Fajr comes well before sunrise, so using sunrise instead would stretch the night and push the last third later. In Britain in winter that error is over an hour.
Why does the night end at the next morning's Fajr?
Because that is the night you are actually in. A night beginning on the 21st ends on the morning of the 22nd, so this tool computes both days and uses the later Fajr. The difference is usually a minute or two, but measuring from the same day's Fajr would be measuring the previous night.
Does the last third mean the same thing in summer and winter?
It is always a third of that night, so it moves and changes length with the season. In London a December night runs about fourteen hours, making each third nearly five; in June the night is short enough that each third is under two hours.
What happens when the night does not end?
Far enough north there are dates when either Maghrib or Fajr does not occur, and a night with no ending cannot be divided. The tool says so rather than producing a number. If your mosque follows a convention for those nights, select it and the divisions will follow from that.
Why does this differ from another site by a few minutes?
Because the ends of the night are Maghrib and Fajr, and Fajr depends on which twilight angle the calculation method uses. Shift Fajr by twenty minutes and every boundary inside the night shifts with it. Set the method your mosque follows and the two should agree.

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