Sunrise and Sunset
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40 free Sunrise and Sunset trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Every day begins and ends with the same event run in opposite directions, and people have been watching both for as long as there have been people. Sunrise and sunset set the rhythm for calendars, prayers, monuments and photographs, and the physics behind those red skies is more surprising than it looks. This quiz covers the science first: why the sky changes colour, what the stages of twilight are, how the atmosphere alters what you see at the horizon, and what daybreak and nightfall look like from orbit and on other worlds. It then moves to the places famous for their views, the ancient sites built to catch the light on particular days, and the religious customs, proverbs, paintings, films and songs that sunrise and sunset have inspired. It suits anyone who wants a sunrise vs sunset challenge with real answers, from science classes and photography clubs to quiz nights. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you finish knowing why as well as what.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01On which planet do sunsets glow blue around the Sun, because fine dust hanging in the air filters the daylight?
Mars
Mars has butterscotch daytime skies that turn blue near the setting Sun, the reverse of Earth, and its Sun looks only two-thirds as wide.
Q 02Which planet, called both the morning star and the evening star, spins backwards so the Sun rises in the west there?
Venus
Venus turns clockwise, the opposite way to most planets, and so slowly that one spin takes 243 Earth days, longer than its entire year.
Q 03About how many sunrises do astronauts aboard the International Space Station see each day as they circle Earth?
16
16 sunrises and sunsets pass the station every day because of its orbital speed, so the windows are covered during sleep periods to fake a night.
Q 04Which country's native name is written with characters meaning the sun's origin?
Japan
Japan adopted the name Nippon after an envoy to the Tang court said he disliked the older label for his country, a tenth-century history records.
Q 05Which prehistoric monument in southern England is aligned towards the sunrise on the summer solstice?
Stonehenge
Stonehenge works in reverse too: the same axis that frames the midsummer sunrise points to the sunset on the shortest day of the year.
Q 06Which French artist painted Impression, Sunrise, the harbour scene credited with giving Impressionism its name?
Claude Monet
Claude Monet showed the hazy view of Le Havre, his hometown, in 1874, and the critic Louis Leroy borrowed its title to name the whole new style.
Q 07Which name do astronomers give the moving line between day and night, where a sunrise or sunset is under way?
Terminator
Terminator is the astronomers' word, and at its fastest the line sweeps over flat ground at roughly 1,040 mph.
Q 08Which Indonesian volcano's 1883 eruption produced spectacular red sunsets around the world for many months afterwards?
Krakatoa
Krakatoa darkened skies for years, and a British artist, William Ascroft, made thousands of colour sketches of the red sunsets that followed.
Q 09At which point in a typical day does the air usually reach its lowest temperature?
Near sunrise
Near sunrise is usually the coldest point, not midnight, because the ground goes on shedding warmth until the Sun returns to top it up.
Q 10Which tall garden flowers track daylight from east to west while young, then settle facing the dawn once mature?
Sunflowers
Sunflowers stop turning once they bloom, and the belief that open flower heads follow the Sun all day is a common misconception.
Q 11Which process in Earth's air, named after a British physicist, strips blue from low sunlight and leaves sunsets red?
Rayleigh scattering
Rayleigh scattering hits short blue wavelengths hardest, which also explains the daytime sky: that stray blue reaches the eye from every direction.
Q 12Which effect of Earth's atmosphere keeps the Sun visible at sunset after it has geometrically dropped below the horizon?
Refraction
Refraction lifts the Sun's image by about its own width, so the whole disc is already below the horizon when it appears to touch it.
Q 13On which twice-yearly occasion does the Sun rise due east and set due west for almost everyone on Earth?
Equinox
Q 21Which Egyptian god was said to sail the sky by day, then cross the underworld to be reborn at sunrise?
Ra
Ra used two boats, a morning barque for the daytime sky and an evening one that carried him through the underworld and back east for his rebirth.
Q 22Which Roman goddess of the dawn gave her name to the northern lights, a term Galileo was using by 1619?
Aurora
Aurora was said to cross the sky from east to west each day announcing the coming of the Sun, and her Greek counterpart was Eos.
Q 23During Ramadan, which meal do Muslims eat at sunset to break the daily fast, traditionally beginning with dates?
Iftar
Iftar follows the sunset call to prayer, while the other meal of a fasting day, suhur, has to be finished before dawn.
Equinox comes from the Latin for equal night, because day and night are then almost the same length everywhere on the planet.
Q 14Which name do photographers give the spell of soft, reddish daylight shortly after sunrise or before sunset?
Golden hour
Golden hour happens because low sunlight crosses far more air, which softens and reddens it; film crews also call it the magic hour.
Q 15Which fleeting optical effect, seen for a second or two as the Sun sets, did an 1882 Jules Verne novel help popularise?
Green flash
Green flash sightings rarely last more than two seconds, appearing as the atmosphere splits the Sun's colours apart; Verne titled his novel The Green Ray.
Q 16After sunset, which stage of fading daylight comes first, lasting until the Sun is six degrees below the horizon?
Civil twilight
Civil twilight still gives enough daylight for most outdoor activities, and lawmakers borrow the idea for rules such as when drivers must switch on headlights.
Q 17Near which line of latitude is twilight shortest, because the Sun drops at a right angle to the horizon?
The Equator
The Equator gets a little over 70 minutes of twilight before sunrise, while the polar regions can spend many hours in half-light.
Q 18In which month does the Sun finally set at the South Pole, after roughly six months of continuous daylight?
March
March brings the only sunset of the polar year, as southern autumn begins, and the Sun does not rise there again until late September.
Q 19On which world does the gap from one sunrise to the next last about 29.5 Earth days, with daylight for two weeks?
The Moon
The Moon turns once in about the time it takes to circle Earth, so each lunar sunrise is followed by a fortnight of day and a fortnight of night.
Q 20By the astronomers' definition, sunrise happens when which part of the Sun's disc appears on the horizon?
Its upper edge
Its upper edge, not its centre, marks the moment, and sunset uses the mirror rule: it ends when the last sliver of that same rim disappears.
Q 24The Jewish Sabbath begins shortly before sunset on which day of the week, when candles are lit to welcome it?
Friday
Friday evening opens the Sabbath because the Jewish calendar counts each day from sunset to sunset, and it lasts until three stars show the next night.
Q 25Which Christian festival is marked by outdoor sunrise services, first recorded among Moravians in Saxony in 1732?
Easter
Easter drew the unmarried men of Herrnhut to the hilltop graveyard after an all-night vigil, where they sang hymns as the day broke.
Q 26In one common version of the old weather rhyme, a red sky at night delights which workers instead of sailors?
Shepherds
Shepherds share the rhyme with sailors, and the idea is ancient: the Gospel of Matthew already treats a red evening sky as a sign of fair weather.
Q 27Which bugle call, named from the French for wake up, is chiefly used to rouse soldiers at sunrise?
Reveille
Reveille need not be played on a bugle: the wake-up call has also been sounded on trumpets, drums, fifes and pipes.
Q 28Which term describes animals that are active mainly at dawn and dusk, from the Latin word for twilight?
Crepuscular
Crepuscular species divide into dawn specialists, called matutinal, and dusk specialists, called vespertine, and the habit is thought to help dodge predators.
Q 29Which term names the reddish light seen on mountains only once the Sun is below the horizon?
Alpenglow
Alpenglow, from the German for Alps glow, is not direct sunlight at all: it is light bounced back off the air after the Sun has gone.
Q 30Which faint glow of sunlight bounced off interplanetary dust is nicknamed the false dawn when seen before sunrise?
Zodiacal light
Zodiacal light is so faint that light pollution easily hides it, and it has a partner glow, the gegenschein, on the far side of the sky from the Sun.