How the times are worked out
Both times depend on sunset where you are. The tool calculates sunset from the sun’s position for your exact coordinates and date, using the same solar engine as the site’s prayer-time tool, at sea level and with standard atmospheric refraction. Candle lighting is sunset minus the minutes you choose. For the end of Shabbat, the 8.5° option finds the moment the centre of the sun is 8.5 degrees below the horizon; the fixed options add 42, 50 or 72 minutes to sunset. Every time is rounded to the nearest minute and shown on your local clock, with daylight saving applied by your browser.
Why communities use different minutes
The 18-minute custom is the most widely printed, but it is not the only one. Hebcal notes that Jerusalem lights candles 40 minutes before sunset, Haifa and Zikhron Ya’akov 30 minutes, and that some sources use 20. For the end of Shabbat, 8.5° below the horizon is described as the time three small stars can be seen, and the fixed 42, 50 and 72 minute times are other customs. The tool shows the convention you pick and does not rank them. Your synagogue’s printed calendar is the one to follow.
Festival evenings and second days
Using the fixed Hebrew calendar, the festival table lists the evening before each Yom Tov: Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, the first days of Sukkot, Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah, the first and last days of Passover, and Shavuot. Outside Israel several of these last two days, so the second evening appears too, with candles lit after nightfall rather than before sunset. When a festival runs straight into Shabbat, candles for Shabbat are still listed before sunset on Friday, and the festival ends with Havdalah when no holy day follows. Choose Israel or Diaspora to match where you are.
High latitudes and summer nights
Far from the equator the sky can stay light all night in summer. North of about 58 degrees the sun may never get 8.5 degrees below the horizon in June and July, so the tool leaves that end time blank and suggests the fixed-minute options. Inside the Arctic and Antarctic circles the sun may not set at all for weeks; the tool then shows no sunset instead of inventing a time. Communities in these places follow their own rabbi’s ruling, which this tool does not try to replace.
How the times were checked
We compared a full year of candle-lighting and Havdalah times, Shabbat and festivals from October 2026 to October 2027, with Hebcal.com for New York, London, Jerusalem (40 minutes, Israel schedule), Sydney and Toronto (50 minutes after sunset). Every one of more than 600 times agreed to within one minute, and the list of evenings matched exactly. Differences of a minute come from the two programs’ sunset formulas. Hebcal’s data is used only as a check, under its CC BY 4.0 licence. This is general help, not a religious ruling.