Magh Purnima 2027: Date When No Sunrise Holds the Tithi

The Purnima of Magha in 2027 belongs to Saturday, 20 February 2027, but not in the way most full moons belong to a day. No sunrise in February falls inside it: the tithi begins after the 20th has dawned and is over before the 21st does. The Moon is full in the small hours of Sunday, before dawn. This page sets out the two instants, the margins on each side, and why the 20th is the day that inherits the tithi.

A Purnima Between Two Sunrises (माघ पूर्णिमा)

The full moon that ends the tithi is in the site’s DE421 lunation table at 04:53 on Sunday 21 February 2027. The start, at 08:00 on 20 February, is not in any table row and comes from the site’s lunar code, whose results agree with the DE421 tables to within 1 minute at the 86 tithi instants where both give a value; for the end of this tithi it lands on the same minute as the full moon in the lunation table.

At New Delhi the sun rises at 06:55 on the 20th, 65 minutes before the Purnima opens, so the daily panchang heads that day Shukla Chaturdashi. On the 21st sunrise is at 06:54, 2 hours 1 minute after the full moon, and the day is headed Krishna Pratipada. The sunrise tithis run Shukla Trayodashi, Shukla Chaturdashi, Krishna Pratipada. A tithi that contains no sunrise is called kshaya, and this one, 20 hours 53 minutes long, is kshaya at New Delhi with both margins comfortably over half an hour.

Why the 20th Takes the Purnima

A sunrise-reckoning panchang cannot head any day with this Purnima, so it records it inside the entry of the day on which the tithi is current. The tithi touches two civil days, and unequally. On the 20th it holds everything from about an hour after sunrise onwards: 10 hours 14 minutes of daylight before the 18:14 sunset, then the evening and the night until the small hours. On the 21st it holds only the dark hours after midnight, and it is gone by dawn. The 20th is the day on which the Purnima prevails, and it is the one the tithi is listed against.

Anything kept later in the day, in the evening, or under the full Moon that night therefore falls on the Saturday, the only day whose waking hours hold the tithi. A rite that looks specifically for the Purnima at sunrise finds it on neither morning, and how a given calendar or temple resolves that is its own decision. This page gives the instants and does not pick a bathing morning on anyone’s behalf.

The Same Answer in Every City the Site Computes

Tithi instants are the same across India, while sunrise moves with longitude, so a kshaya at New Delhi need not be one everywhere. This time it is. For each of the 38 cities in the site’s panchang, its solar code puts the sunrise of the 20th before the Purnima opens and the sunrise of the 21st after the full moon. The narrowest margin at the start is Jodhpur’s, whose sun rises at 07:09, 51 minutes before the tithi begins. The narrowest at the end is in the far east: Guwahati’s sunrise on the 21st is at 05:54, 61 minutes after the full moon, and Kolkata’s, at 06:04, is 71 minutes after it. Where a sunrise came within 30 minutes of either instant, this page would decline to say which side of it the morning fell; no city on the list comes that close. Your own town is on the panchang calculator.

The Full Moon in Magha

In the classical scheme a lunar month takes its name from the nakshatra the Moon is in, or near, when it is full, and Magha is named for the nakshatra Magha. In 2027 the match is exact. The lunation table puts the full moon in Leo, in Magha, which covers Leo 0°00′ – 13°20′; nakshatras.js gives its presiding deity as the Pitrs, the ancestors. The Sun, which enters sidereal Aquarius earlier in the month, stands opposite. At sunrise on the 20th the daily table has the Moon in Ashlesha, the nakshatra before; by the site’s lunar code it crosses into Magha in the late afternoon, after the Purnima has begun, and the 21st dawns with it still in Magha. More on the nakshatra itself is on the Magha nakshatra page.

The End of the Magha Bathing Month in Prayagraj

This full moon closes the purnimanta month of Magha, which opens the day after Paush Purnima on Friday 22 January; in amanta calendars the month begins instead at the new moon of 6 February and this is its midpoint, but the name of the full moon is Magha in both. Prayagraj custom keeps that purnimanta month, Paush Purnima to Magha Purnima, as the month of the Magha bath at the Sangam, and the kalpavasis who live on the riverbank through it bring their stay to a close on this Purnima. The Magh Mela’s own bathing schedule is set by its organisers; this page does not reproduce it and gives no figures for attendance.

Guru Ravidas Jayanti and Maghi Purnima

The Ravidassia tradition marks the birth anniversary of Guru Ravidas on Magha Purnima, so in 2027 its date follows the tithi set out above; the day each dera or gurdwara keeps is for that community’s own calendar to fix, and this page states only where the tithi falls. In Bengal the same full moon is called Maghi Purnima. A Kolkata panchang meets the same kshaya, with the full moon before the city’s sunrise on the 21st by the margin given above.

The bright fortnight that this Purnima ends holds Vasant Panchami, which the festival rules file as the fifth of Magha’s bright half, and three days before the Purnima opens it holds Jaya Ekadashi on Wednesday 17 February. Another full moon that holds no New Delhi sunrise, with a different outcome in the east, is worked through on the Datta Jayanti 2026 page.

The Figures in One Place

• Day the Purnima is listed against: Saturday, 20 February 2027
• Purnima tithi: 08:00 on 20 February (computed) to the full moon at 04:53 on 21 February (DE421)
• New Delhi sunrises: 06:55 on the 20th (Shukla Chaturdashi) and 06:54 on the 21st (Krishna Pratipada); no Purnima sunrise
• Narrowest city margins: Jodhpur, 51 minutes at the start; Guwahati, 61 minutes at the end
• Full moon position: Moon in Leo, Magha; Sun in Aquarius

The year’s other dates are in the 2027 festival calendar, the fasts in the Ekadashi 2027 list, and every computed festival on the festival pages. In Hindi: माघ पूर्णिमा 2027: तारीख, जब किसी सूर्योदय पर तिथि नहीं.