⭐ Starlight Tools / Day-of-Year Converter

Day-of-Year ⇄ Date & Day-of-Week

Convert day-of-year (1–365/366) to a calendar date and weekday—or the other way around. All calculations run locally in your browser.

1) Day-of-Year → Date & Weekday

Tip: leap years allow up to 366. The tool will validate your input based on the year.

2) Date → Day-of-Year & Weekday

About This Tool

Quickly translate between day-of-year (DOY) and a calendar date, and see the day of week instantly. Useful for Julian/ordinal date codes, data files, project schedules, astronomy logs, and software timestamps. Calculations are performed at midnight UTC for consistency across regions.

The converter is leap-year aware (Gregorian rule: divisible by 4, except centuries not divisible by 400), so it validates input ranges per year. It’s also privacy-first—no data leaves your browser.

Tip: use Use Today / Set Today to prefill fields with today’s UTC date.

Day-of-Year Converter: FAQs

What is day-of-year (DOY)?

It’s the ordinal number of a date within a year: 1 = Jan 1, 32 = Feb 1 in common years, and so on.

How do you handle leap years?

Leap years have 366 days. The tool follows the Gregorian rule and adjusts validation and calculations automatically.

Which timezone is used?

UTC at midnight to avoid DST surprises. Results are shown in ISO (YYYY-MM-DD) for easy copying.

Is my data private?

Yes. Everything runs locally in your browser. No uploads or storage.

What Is “Day-of-Year” and Why It Matters

Day-of-year (DOY)—also called an ordinal date—is the running count of days within a year: 1 for 1 January, 32 for 1 February in common years, and so on, up to 365 (or 366 in leap years). It’s a compact way to reference dates without month names and is widely used in weather records, agriculture (planting/harvest windows), finance (settlement cycles), manufacturing (lot codes), and software logs.

A Short History & Standards

Modern civil dating in most of the world follows the Gregorian calendar (introduced in 1582 and adopted by different countries at different times). The Gregorian leap-year rule keeps the calendar aligned with the seasons: years divisible by 4 are leap years, except centuries not divisible by 400. For data exchange, ISO 8601 formalises several date formats—one of them is the ordinal date form YYYY-DDD (for example, 2025-256), where DDD is the day-of-year. This is the format you’ll often see in NOAA/NASA datasets, telemetry, and scientific archives.

“Julian Date” vs. Day-of-Year (Common Confusion)

People sometimes say “Julian date” when they mean DOY or a compact code like YYDDD. Strictly speaking, Julian Day Number (JDN) is an astronomical count of days from a fixed epoch (used by astronomers worldwide and not tied to the Gregorian year). If your file names or barcodes show patterns like 2025-035 or 25035, you’re almost certainly looking at day-of-year, not JDN.

Why DOY Is Useful

  • Sorting & filtering: DOY increases monotonically within a year—great for spreadsheets and scripts.
  • Seasonal analytics: Compare the same “time of year” across different years, regardless of month lengths.
  • Operational shorthand: Manufacturing lots, warranty periods, and project milestones often use DOY codes.

About This Converter

This tool converts day-of-year ⇄ calendar date and provides the day of week. It recognises leap years automatically and runs at midnight UTC to avoid daylight-saving surprises. Results are displayed in ISO format (YYYY-MM-DD) for easy copying into reports and spreadsheets. Everything happens locally in your browser for privacy.