Panchang for your city and date

What you’ll need

A city and a date; both start filled in.

What you’ll get

The five limbs for your city and date, with Rahu Kaal, Yamaganda, Gulika and both Choghadiya rows cut from the daylight where you are.

You get the five limbs with the time each one hands over to the next, the three periods people avoid, and both Choghadiya rows, all cut from the sunrise and sunset where you are rather than from a table somebody printed for somewhere else.

A panchang day begins at sunrise and ends at the next one. That is the whole reason this calculator asks where you are before it tells you anything. Look up the same calendar date from Delhi and from Chicago and you can be on two different tithis, because Chicago’s sunrise arrives more than half a day later and the Moon has moved on. Neither answer is wrong. They are answers to different questions, and the question is always about a place.

Rahu Kaal makes the point harder to argue with. It is not ninety minutes. It is an eighth of the daylight, so it stretches in June and shrinks in December, and it stretches further the closer you get to the poles. On the December solstice an eighth is 85 minutes in Chennai, 77 in Delhi and 59 in London. Any table that hands you the same block all year is not computing this at all, and the further north you live the more it is out by.

Day boundary

Sunrise to the next sunrise at the place given, which is why this calculator asks for a place and not only a date

Zodiac

Nirayana (sidereal), Lahiri ayanamsa, the same as every other Vedic page here

Sunrise

Geometric sunrise and sunset for the centre of the Sun's disc, from astronomy-engine, at sea level. Almanacs that use the upper limb and a refraction allowance will differ by a minute or two

Not computed

Regional festival lists, muhurta selection for a specific act, and the sunset-reckoned Vikram Samvat month names

50 cities are offered, weighted towards India and towards the places people read a panchang from over breakfast. If yours is missing, the nearest one on the same side of the same time zone will be within a couple of minutes on everything here.

The place is not decoration. Your day starts at sunrise where you are, and Rahu Kaal is one eighth of the daylight you get, so both answers move when the place does.

The periods to avoid

Each is one eighth of the day’s daylight at your place. Which eighth falls to which period depends only on the weekday.

Rahu Kaal

The one most people know. Traditionally avoided for anything you are starting.

Yamaganda

Avoided for travel and for beginnings, on the same eighth-of-the-day logic.

Gulika Kaal

The period whose effects repeat, so avoided for anything you would not want twice.

The five limbs, in brief

Tithi

The lunar day: how far the Moon has pulled ahead of the Sun, in twelve-degree steps.

Vara

The weekday, which turns at sunrise rather than at midnight.

Nakshatra

The lunar mansion the Moon is crossing, one of twenty-seven.

Yoga

Sun and Moon added together, in the same twenty-seven steps. The only limb whose value depends on the ayanamsa.

Karana

Half a tithi. Four of the eleven names appear once a month; the other seven repeat.

Choghadiya

The same eight divisions, read for what they suit rather than only for what to avoid. Amrit, Shubh and Labh are the ones people pick; Kaal, Rog and Udveg are the ones they work around. The eighth repeats the first, which is not an error in the table.

Four of the five are the Moon, measured four different ways, which is the tell that this is a lunar almanac wearing a solar calendar’s clothes. Only the vara, the weekday, has nothing to do with the Moon, and even that turns at sunrise rather than at midnight.

What this page does not do is pick a muhurta for you. Choosing an hour for a specific act means weighing the limbs against each other and against the chart of the person acting, and different traditions weigh them differently. The almanac is the raw material for that decision, not the decision.