Transform Epoch UTC to String EST using momentjs - timezone

Question

I have two input variables: an epoch time in UTC time zone and the name of the actual time zone. How do I get a formatted day/time using moment.js that would take in account the DST changes. I tried this code but it doesn't do the trick. What am I doing wrong, please?
var abs_time = 1611188219.277; // this is UTC coresponding to 1/21/2021 18:31:37 UTC
var timezone = "America/New_York"; // this the actual time zone
var mom = moment(abs_time * 1000).format();
var date_time = moment.tz(mom, timezone).format('ddd, MMM DD YYYY - HH:mm');
console.log(date_time);
//actual result: Thu, Jan 21 2021 - 18:31
//desired result: Thu, Jan 21 2021 - 13:31 - in the summer this should only be 4 hour difference

Answer 1

First, 1611188219.277 actually corresponds to 2021-01-21T00:16:59.277Z, not the time you gave in your question (assuming it is a Unix timestamp with seconds precision). This can be seen with the following code:
const d = new Date(1611188219.277 * 1000);
const s = d.toISOString();
console.log(s);
You can get the equivalent local time in a specific time zone without any libraries, as long as you're satisfied with the output produced by the toLocaleString function.
const d = new Date(1611188219.277 * 1000);
const s = d.toLocaleString(undefined, { timeZone: 'America/New_York' });
console.log(s);
Note that undefined in the above code will use the browser's current language. If you want a specific language, you could pass its language code there instead (such as en or en-US, etc.)
In general, due to its project status, you should avoid using Moment unless it's already being used in an existing project. If however, you must use Moment and Moment-TimeZone for this, you can do the following to get the same result:
const m = moment.tz(1611188219.277 * 1000, 'America/New_York');
const s = m.format('ddd, MMM DD YYYY - HH:mm');
console.log(s);
<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/moment.js/2.29.1/moment.min.js"></script>
<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/moment-timezone/0.5.32/moment-timezone-with-data-10-year-range.min.js"></script>
I used the same format from your question, but of course you could change this as desired.
You might also consider using Luxon (the successor to Moment), or Date-fns, or several other libraries.
And yes, all of the above will correctly take daylight saving time into account.