Surat Panchang, 26 December 2026

The five windows in Surat on 26 December 2026

In clock order through the day. Which numbered eighth of daylight Rahu Kaal, Gulika and Yamaghanta each take is fixed by the weekday rather than by the clock, and no two weekdays share the assignment: on a Saturday Rahu Kaal is the 3rd of the eight, Gulika the 1st and Yamaghanta the 6th. Sunrise 07:13 to sunset 18:04 is 10h 51m, so an eighth of it runs 81.4 minutes and a fifteenth — which is what Abhijit is — runs 43 minutes. The Length column is the gap between two endpoints each rounded to the whole minute, which is why the three eighths below read 81 minutes apiece.

The convention the classical almanacs record is that nothing new is begun inside Rahu Kaal, Gulika or Yamaghanta, and that Abhijit and Brahma muhurat are the day’s two settled windows — Brahma muhurat being the ninety-six minutes ending at sunrise, which is why it is the one window here whose length never changes with the season. What the tradition does not do is grade the rest of the day, and neither does this page. Choosing a window for a purpose needs a chart as well as a clock.

What a national panchang gets wrong in Surat today

The column on the right is the site’s own national table for 26 December 2026, computed for New Delhi from the JPL DE421 ephemeris — the numbers /panchang/2026-12-26/ actually prints. It is the same table almost every panchang in the vertical is a copy of. Every limb on it is right for Surat; every time on it is wrong, and the last column is by how much.

The widest of them on 26 December 2026 is Sunset, which a national table places 33 minutes earlier than Surat's. Longitude explains most of it: Surat sits 4.38° west of New Delhi, and four minutes per degree is the whole of the local-time correction. The rest is latitude, which does not shift sunrise so much as stretch the day — and because Rahu Kaal is a fraction of that day rather than a span on a clock, a stretched day moves the window further than it moves sunrise. That is why the difference in the table above is not one number repeated seven times.

An eighth of the day is not ninety minutes

Rahu Kaal, Gulika and Yamaghanta are each one eighth of the interval from sunrise to sunset. That is a definition, not an approximation, and it means the length of each is a property of the day rather than a fixed quantity anyone can print once. A table quoting a flat ninety minutes is therefore wrong here today by 9 minutes, and wrong in the long direction — it keeps it open past its end. Across 2026 in Surat an eighth runs from 81 minutes to 101 minutes, so the error is not a constant either. Abhijit is a fifteenth of the same interval rather than an eighth, so it runs 43 minutes today — a little over half of Rahu Kaal, and it moves with local solar noon rather than with the clock. Brahma muhurat is the exception: fixed at 96 minutes because it is defined as a span before sunrise rather than a fraction of daylight, so in Surat it shifts with sunrise and never changes length.

Where 26 December sits in Surat’s year

10h 51m of daylight is Surat’s shortest of 2026, a length it shares with 12 other days, and 155 minutes shorter than the other end of the year, on 21 June and 2 other days at the same length. Against yesterday nothing moved by a whole minute: sunrise, sunset and the length of the day all held. That is what a table printed to the whole minute does with a change measured in seconds — it happens either side of the solstices, where the sun genuinely stalls, and it happens at low latitudes for weeks at a stretch, where the daily change is small all year.

Of the 38 cities this site computes, Surat is the joint 31st to see the sun on 26 December 2026, sharing the printed minute with one other city. Sunrise across all 38 spans 82 minutes, from 06:08 in Guwahati to 07:30 in Jammu — and Rahu Kaal’s opening spans 75 minutes, which is the more useful of the two numbers and the one no national table can carry.

The five limbs on 26 December 2026

These five are the same everywhere in India, and they are listed here for completeness rather than because they vary by city — a tithi is an angular relationship between the Sun and the Moon, and an angle does not have a postal address. One caveat is honest and worth stating: the almanac convention is to read each limb at sunrise, and the tabulated values above are read at New Delhi's sunrise. Surat’s sunrise is 2 minutes later than that, so on a day when a limb turns over inside that gap, the value current at Surat’s own sunrise is the neighbouring one. The site does not guess which days those are; where a limb is close to its boundary the honest place to look is the neighbouring-day view on the national page for 26 December 2026, which shows the days on either side for exactly this reason.

26 December 2026 in Surat and the cities nearest it

East to west, in the order the sun reaches them: Surat and the four cities nearest it, with Guwahati and Jammu, which see the sun first and last of all 38 on this date. The last column is measured from Surat, so the table differs on every page that shares this date.

On 26 December 2026 the two columns happen to run in the same order, which is not something to rely on: because every city takes the same numbered eighth on a Saturday and an eighth is a fraction of that city’s own daylight, a place that sees the sun later can reach its Rahu Kaal first whenever its day is enough shorter. Whether that happens depends on the date and on which eighth the weekday assigns, so the ordering here is a fact about 26 December 2026 and not a rule.

Worth noting about 26 December 2026

• Because this is the year's shortest daylight here, the eighths are at their narrowest: Rahu Kaal runs 81 minutes today against 101 minutes at midsummer in Surat — 20 minutes of difference in one window, from nothing but the length of the day.

Questions about Surat on 26 December 2026

The same date nearby: Nashik (164 km) · Ahmedabad (208 km) · Mumbai (233 km) · Aurangabad (299 km)