Five Limbs of Time
Panchang by Date
Tithi, paksha, nakshatra, yoga and karana read at sunrise, with sunrise, sunset and the day's auspicious and inauspicious windows. Computed from the JPL DE421 ephemeris for New Delhi.
How to read this. The five limbs are stated as they stand at sunrise, which is the convention a daily panchang follows: the day is named for what prevails when it begins. A tithi lasts between twenty and twenty-seven hours, so the one shown here will usually change during the day — which is why a festival is not always observed on the day its tithi is current at sunrise. Rahu Kaal, Yamaghanta and Gulika each occupy one eighth of daylight, the particular eighth depending on the weekday, so each runs 77 to 105 minutes here across the year rather than a fixed ninety. Abhijit is the eighth of fifteen equal parts of daylight, centred on solar noon. Brahma Muhurat is the ninety-six minutes before sunrise.
Tithi, nakshatra, yoga and karana are angular relationships between the Sun and Moon, so they hold anywhere in India. Sunrise, sunset and every window derived from them are for New Delhi and shift by minutes to about an hour with longitude — enough that a tithi changing near sunrise can put two cities on different days. This page does not compute your ascendant, and so cannot give you a lagna-based muhurat.
For windows computed at your own coordinates, and for muhurat judged against your birth chart rather than the shared calendar, consult an astrologer.
Personalised muhurtaWhat a Panchang actually tells you
Panchang means "five limbs" — pancha (five) and anga (limb). Those five are Tithi (the lunar day), Vara (the weekday), Nakshatra (the lunar mansion the Moon is passing through), Yoga (a specific angular relationship between the Sun and the Moon) and Karana (half a tithi). Almost every traditional date decision in a Hindu household — a wedding, a griha pravesh, a naming ceremony, the day to begin a fast — is read off some combination of these five values.
A Panchang day is measured sunrise to sunrise, not midnight to midnight. This trips up almost everyone reading one for the first time: at 2 AM on a Saturday morning, the Panchang still shows Friday's values, because Saturday has not begun yet. It also means the five limbs do not change over at a tidy hour. A tithi can end at 3:47 PM and the next one begin at that exact minute.
Tithi and Paksha
A lunar month holds 30 tithis, split into two pakshas of fifteen. Shukla Paksha is the waxing half, running from the new Moon (Amavasya) to the full Moon (Purnima). Krishna Paksha is the waning half that follows. A tithi is defined as the time the Moon takes to gain twelve degrees of longitude on the Sun, and because both bodies move at varying speeds, a tithi is not a fixed length. Measured across the 730 days this page covers, the shortest ran 20h 04m and the longest 26h 43m, averaging 23h 37m.
That variable length is why a tithi sometimes appears to skip a day or repeat one on a calendar. Traditionally, the tithi in force at sunrise names the day. Some tithis are generally avoided for new undertakings — the Riktha tithis (Chaturthi, Navami and Chaturdashi), along with Amavasya — while Ekadashi, Purnima and Dwadashi carry their own observances.
Nakshatra, Yoga and Karana
The zodiac divides into 27 nakshatras of 13°20′ each, and the Moon passes through roughly one per day. The nakshatra in force shapes what a day suits: Pushya is widely considered among the most benefic for purchases and new work, while Bharani, Krittika, Ashlesha and Jyeshtha are usually avoided for auspicious beginnings.
Yoga is calculated from the combined longitude of the Sun and Moon, again divided into 27 parts. Karana is half a tithi, so there are sixty in a lunar month drawn from eleven names — four that occur once and seven that repeat. Muhurta practitioners watch for Vishti Karana, better known as Bhadra, which is avoided for anything auspicious.
Rahu Kaal and the other inauspicious windows
Rahu Kaal is roughly one-eighth of the daylight span, so both its length and its start time move with sunrise and sunset, and the slot it occupies rotates by weekday. The ninety minutes usually quoted is only a midpoint: at Delhi's latitude the window runs from 77 minutes near the winter solstice to 105 near the summer one. It is avoided for beginning anything new — signing, buying, travelling, launching. Ongoing work is generally considered unaffected.
Two similar windows, Yamaganda and Gulika Kaal, are computed the same way from different octants of the day. Pulling the other direction is Abhijit Muhurat, a fifteenth of daylight centred on local midday — twenty to twenty-eight minutes either side of it, depending on the season — treated as broadly auspicious on most weekdays and a common fallback when no better window exists.
Why your location changes the answer
Everything above hangs off sunrise, and sunrise is local. In mid-August, the Sun rises in Kolkata almost an hour before it rises in Ahmedabad, so Rahu Kaal, Abhijit Muhurat and the sunrise that names the tithi are all genuinely different in the two cities on the same date.
The values on this page are computed from the JPL DE421 ephemeris for New Delhi, so tithi, nakshatra, yoga and karana are exact and hold anywhere in India — they are angular relationships between the Sun and the Moon, not local observations. Sunrise, sunset and every window derived from them are Delhi's, and shift with your longitude. What the page does not give you is the tithi and nakshatra end-times to the minute, or anything that depends on your ascendant, and a muhurta you would plan a wedding around needs both.
Frequently asked questions
Is today's Panchang the same everywhere in India?
No. Every Panchang value is anchored to local sunrise, which varies by well over an hour between the east and west of the country. Rahu Kaal, Abhijit Muhurat and even which tithi names the day can differ between two cities on the same date. Panchang published for one city is an approximation everywhere else.
Why does the tithi change in the middle of the day?
A tithi is the time the Moon needs to gain twelve degrees on the Sun, which takes between twenty and twenty-seven hours depending on how fast both are moving — across the 730 days this page covers, 20h 04m at the shortest and 26h 43m at the longest. It has no relationship to a 24-hour clock day, so it begins and ends at whatever time it happens to. By convention the tithi running at sunrise gives the day its name.
Should I avoid all work during Rahu Kaal?
The traditional rule is narrower than most people assume. Rahu Kaal is avoided for starting something new — a purchase, a journey, a signing, a launch. Work already underway, routine duties and anything urgent or medical are not considered affected, and no tradition asks you to sit idle for an hour and a half.
Can I pick a wedding date from this page?
Use it to shortlist, not to decide. A marriage muhurta weighs the tithi, nakshatra, yoga and karana against both charts, checks for Bhadra and the inauspicious windows, and needs sunrise for your actual location. The five limbs shown here are exact, but they are the day's headline values rather than end-times, and nothing here reads your chart — so treat it as a first pass and have a pandit confirm the final window.
Related free tools
What 730 Days of Real Panchang Look Like
The table this page reads from covers 1 January 2026 to 31 December 2027 — 730 consecutive days of tithi, nakshatra, yoga and karana computed from the JPL DE421 ephemeris. Having the whole run available means the awkward parts of a lunar calendar can be counted instead of explained away.
34
tithis skipped entirely — kshaya tithi, where a tithi begins and ends between two sunrises and never names a day
23
tithis that name two consecutive days — adhika tithi, where one lasts across two sunrises
8%
of the 729 day-to-day transitions are therefore not a simple step of one
That is the entire answer to why a festival lands on a different weekday each year, why two calendars printed in different cities sometimes disagree by a day, and why an Ekadashi fast is occasionally observed on what looks like the wrong date. A tithi is the time the Moon needs to gain twelve degrees on the Sun, and both bodies move at varying speeds, so a tithi is not a fixed length. Measured over the same span — 740 of them, computed from the ephemeris rather than read off the table, since the table records only the value standing at sunrise — the shortest ran 20h 04m and the longest 26h 43m, averaging 23h 37m.
Sunrises are about twenty-four hours apart, so that spread is the whole mechanism. 414 of the 740 tithis were shorter than a day, and a tithi shorter than a day can begin and end between two sunrises without ever standing at one — it is then skipped from the calendar. A tithi longer than a day can stand at two, and is then counted twice. Neither is an error in anyone’s calendar; both are what a lunar count looks like when it is read once a day.
Over the same 730 days, 48 carry an Ekadashi at sunrise, 142 carry one of the three Riktha tithis usually avoided for new work — Chaturthi, Navami and Chaturdashi, which is 19% of all days — and 102 open under Vishti karana, better known as Bhadra. Roughly one day in 7 begins in Bhadra, which is worth knowing before treating it as a rare obstacle.
Rahu Kaal Is Not Ninety Minutes
Rahu Kaal, Yamaghanta and Gulika Kaal are each one eighth of the daylight span, and Abhijit is the eighth of fifteen equal parts of it — the one straddling local noon. All four therefore move and stretch with the season, because daylight does. Counted across the 730 days in the table, at New Delhi:
| Quantity | Shortest / earliest | Longest / latest |
|---|---|---|
| Sunrise | 05:22 (6 June 2026) | 07:15 (8 January 2026) |
| Length of daylight | 10h 19m (17 December 2026) | 13h 58m (14 June 2026) |
| Rahu Kaal, Yamaghanta, Gulika | 77 minutes | 105 minutes |
| Abhijit Muhurat | 41 minutes | 56 minutes |
| Brahma Muhurat | 96 minutes, every day of the year | |
So the ninety minutes quoted everywhere is a midpoint that holds on about two days of the year. Around the winter solstice the window is 77 minutes and around the summer solstice 105 — a difference of 28 minutes, which is enough to matter if you are timing something to the edge of it. Sunrise itself moves 113 minutes across the year at this latitude, and all four of the daylight-derived windows move and stretch with it. A site publishing a fixed Rahu Kaal per weekday, or a flat ninety minutes, is not computing anything.
Brahma Muhurat is the exception in the table above, and the reason is worth stating: it is not a fraction of daylight. It is defined as the two muhurtas ending at sunrise, and a muhurta is a thirtieth of the full day, so it comes out at a fixed 96 minutes whatever the season. Its start still moves with sunrise by the same 113 minutes; only its length is constant.
Which Eighth of the Day Each Window Takes
Divide daylight into eight equal parts numbered from sunrise. The weekday decides which part each of the three inauspicious windows occupies. The assignment below is not transcribed from a table — it is read back out of all 730 computed days, and every one of them agrees with a single pattern per weekday:
| Weekday | Rahu Kaal | Yamaghanta | Gulika Kaal |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sunday | 8th eighth | 5th eighth | 7th eighth |
| Monday | 2nd eighth | 4th eighth | 6th eighth |
| Tuesday | 7th eighth | 3rd eighth | 5th eighth |
| Wednesday | 5th eighth | 2nd eighth | 4th eighth |
| Thursday | 6th eighth | 1st eighth | 3rd eighth |
| Friday | 4th eighth | 7th eighth | 2nd eighth |
| Saturday | 3rd eighth | 6th eighth | 1st eighth |
Two of the three are simple sequences once you see them. Gulika counts down from the seventh eighth on Sunday to the first on Saturday, and Yamaghanta does the same from the fifth, wrapping round after Thursday. Rahu Kaal is the irregular one, which is why it has to be looked up rather than worked out — and why so many published tables carry it wrongly for one weekday. Note also that on Sunday Rahu Kaal takes the last eighth of daylight, so it ends at sunset: a late-afternoon start on a Sunday is far more likely to fall inside it than the same hour on any other day.
The Nakshatra at Sunrise Is Not Evenly Distributed
Twenty-seven nakshatras over 730 days should give each one about 27 sunrises if the Moon travelled at a constant rate. It does not, because its orbit is an ellipse: it covers between about 11.8° and 15.3° a day, so a nakshatra crossed while the Moon is near apogee holds a sunrise more often than one crossed near perigee. Counted off the table, the commonest is Purva Ashadha with 32 sunrises and the rarest Krittika with 23 — a spread of 9 days, or 33% of the average.
It is a small effect and it washes out over a long enough run, since apogee itself precesses. But it is the reason a two-year sample is not a fair sample of anything, and it is worth knowing before reading significance into how often a particular nakshatra seems to fall on a Sunday. The 27 nakshatras sets out what each one governs.
The Full Lists
The names in order, since a panchang assumes you have them to hand.
The 30 tithis, in order from the new Moon
Shukla Paksha (waxing, Amavasya to Purnima): Pratipada, Dwitiya, Tritiya, Chaturthi, Panchami, Shashthi, Saptami, Ashtami, Navami, Dashami, Ekadashi, Dwadashi, Trayodashi, Chaturdashi, Purnima. Krishna Paksha (waning, Purnima to Amavasya): Pratipada, Dwitiya, Tritiya, Chaturthi, Panchami, Shashthi, Saptami, Ashtami, Navami, Dashami, Ekadashi, Dwadashi, Trayodashi, Chaturdashi, Amavasya.
The 27 yogas
Vishkambha, Priti, Ayushman, Saubhagya, Shobhana, Atiganda, Sukarma, Dhriti, Shula, Ganda, Vriddhi, Dhruva, Vyaghata, Harshana, Vajra, Siddhi, Vyatipata, Variyan, Parigha, Shiva, Siddha, Sadhya, Shubha, Shukla, Brahma, Indra, Vaidhriti. Yoga is computed from the sum of the solar and lunar longitudes rather than their difference, divided into 27 parts of 13°20′. Vyatipata and Vaidhriti are the two treated as unfavourable throughout, and Siddhi, Siddha and Shubha as the reverse.
The 11 karanas
A karana is half a tithi, so a lunar month holds 60. Bava, Balava, Kaulava, Taitila, Gara, Vanija, Vishti each occur 8 times and rotate through the month; Kimstughna, Shakuni, Chatushpada, Naga occur once each — Kimstughna at the very start of the month and the other three at its end. That is 7 × 8 + 4 = 60.
Why the Hindu Year Needs a Thirteenth Month
Twelve lunar months of 29.530589 days come to 354.37 days. A tropical year is 365.2422 days. The lunar year is therefore 10.88 days short, and a purely lunar calendar would walk backwards through the seasons — which is what the Islamic calendar does by design, and what the Hindu calendar deliberately does not.
The fix is to insert a whole extra month whenever the shortfall has accumulated to one. At 10.88 days a year that takes about 32.6 months, so an adhika masa — an extra month, taking the name of the one it precedes with the prefix — falls roughly every third year. The rule that decides which month repeats is astronomical rather than arbitrary: a lunar month containing no solar ingress, no entry of the Sun into a new sidereal sign, is the one duplicated. The rarer opposite also exists, a kshaya masa where one month contains two ingresses and is dropped, and it happens only once or twice a century.
This is why a birthday by tithi drifts against the Gregorian date by about eleven days a year and then jumps back by a month, and why festivals cluster into a narrow seasonal band rather than wandering the calendar. The Hindu calendar is luni-solar: the months are the Moon’s and the year is the Sun’s, and the extra month is the seam between them.
A Panchang Is Not a Muhurta
The distinction is the one thing worth taking from this page. A panchang is a shared almanac: the five limbs at sunrise for a place, identical for everyone in that place. A muhurta is a window selected for a particular person doing a particular thing, and it needs three things this page does not have — the end-times of the limbs to the minute, sunrise at your own coordinates rather than New Delhi’s, and the rising sign at the moment in question weighed against your birth chart.
Use the daily values to shortlist. A day whose tithi is Riktha, whose karana is Bhadra at the hour you had in mind, or whose yoga is Vyatipata can be set aside without further work, and that is genuinely most of the filtering. What cannot be done from an almanac is the last step. Choghadiya and hora divide the day more finely, and shubh muhurat works the other way round, from an event to its dates.