Sunset and sunrise times in Freetown, Sierra Leone

On standard time the sun peaks at 12:44, 44 minutes after clock noon, because the city sits near the western edge of its time zone. Sunrise and sunset are pushed the same way.

Light lingers for 21 minutes after sunset before civil twilight ends — 3 minutes shorter than the 24-minute median across tracked cities, which is what 8.5°N buys you.

Between solstices the sunset walks 47° across the horizon — WSW in midwinter, WNW in midsummer — which is why a fixed viewpoint works only part of the year. Today's bearing is W.

By the end of September the sun will be setting 17 minutes earlier than it did on the first, a shift of roughly 35 seconds a day.

Being inside the tropics means two zenith passages a year, 12 April and 1 September, when the sun is straight up at solar noon rather than merely high.

Sunset lands at close to the same time all year — the annual spread in day length is only 59 minutes, compared with about 8.8 hours at London's latitude.

Around a solstice the day length flattens out, and that is where the calendar is now: the shortest day is 21 December, in 3 months, and sunset moves a mere 8 minutes earlier in the coming fortnight.