localtime not actually giving localtime

there's obviously a time module that works in combination with this problem, but I have not found it yet. I'm simply trying to use Pyephem on a Raspberry Pi to find out what time sunrise and sunset is for my latitude longitude coordinates. the code is quite simply this:

import ephem
import datetime 
import time
now = datetime.datetime.now()
gmNow = time.mktime(time.localtime()) 
Vancouver = ephem.Observer()
Vancouver.lat = 49.2878
Vancouver.horizon = 0
Vancouver.lon = -123.0502
Vancouver.elevation = 80
Vancouver.date = now
# Vancouver.date = time.localtime()

sun = ephem.Sun()

print("sunrise is at",ephem.localtime(Vancouver.next_rising(sun)))
print("sunset is going to be at ",ephem.localtime(Vancouver.next_setting(sun)))
print("now is ",now)
print("gmNow is",gmNow)

what exports, when that runs is wrong by 8 hours though. so it appears that the ephem.localtime() is not actually running.

pi@raspberrypi ~ $ sudo python3 vivarium_sun.py 
sunrise is at 2014-09-19 12:55:56.000004
sunset is going to be at  2014-09-19 00:52:30.000004
now is  2014-09-19 06:22:24.014859
gmNow is 1411132944.0

It's driving me nuts, and it's obviously one of those simple things once it's figured out, so I'm going to the hive mind here.

EDIT** Just typing 'date' into the command line of the Raspberry Pi returns the following:

pi@raspberrypi ~ $ date
Fri Sep 19 18:41:42 PDT 2014

which is accurate.

Solution

You should pass datetime.utcnow() to the observer instead of your local time.

ephem expects latitude and longitude in radians if passed as floats, use strings instead:

from datetime import datetime, timezone

import ephem

now = datetime.now(timezone.utc)
Vancouver = ephem.Observer()
Vancouver.lat = '49.2878'
Vancouver.horizon = 0
Vancouver.lon = '-123.0502'
Vancouver.elevation = 80
Vancouver.date = now
sun = ephem.Sun(Vancouver)

print("sunrise is at", ephem.localtime(Vancouver.next_rising(sun)))
print("sunset is going to be at ", 
      ephem.localtime(Vancouver.next_setting(sun)))
print("now is ",now.astimezone())

Output

sunrise is at 2014-09-20 06:55:38.000005
sunset is going to be at  2014-09-19 19:16:38.000004
now is  2014-09-19 19:15:04.171486-07:00