✕
About UTC
Coordinated Universal Time — the reference every clock on this globe is measured against
UTC isn't the time in any particular place. It's the anchor point: a single global reference kept by atomic clocks, and every timezone on Earth is defined as an offset from it. That's the whole system in one sentence — local time = UTC + offset.
- The offset column on the departure board and the solar-time gridlines on the globe are the same idea in two forms: each 15°-wide band nominally corresponds to one hour of offset from UTC, since the Earth turns 360° in 24 hours.
- UTC itself never shifts. It runs at a constant rate all year. The offsets some places apply to it do shift — that's daylight saving. New York sits at UTC-5 in winter and UTC-4 in summer; UTC doesn't move, the local rule around it does.
- Offsets range from UTC-12 to UTC+14, not just ±12. A handful of Pacific nations sit east of the international date line at up to +14 so their calendar day matches their main trading partners instead of their nearest neighbors.
- Not every offset is a whole hour. India (UTC+5:30), Nepal (UTC+5:45), and parts of Australia (UTC+9:30/+10:30) chose half- or quarter-hour offsets — on the globe you'll see those cities sitting between gridlines rather than on one.
- UTC is kept aligned to Earth's actual rotation, which isn't perfectly constant, through occasional leap seconds added by international timekeeping authorities — not by tracking the sun directly, which is what the solar-noon meridian on this globe does instead.
Right now it's --:--:-- UTC — find your own offset by clicking your city's marker on the globe, or searching for it above.