Today's Panchang: Tithi, Nakshatra & Yoga
Calculated where you are, not for a city you have never been to.
The panchang is the Vedic almanac for a day, in five parts. Tithi boundaries are moments in universal time, so the day they fall on depends on your longitude — which is why location changes the answer.
The five limbs of a day
Panchang means five limbs, and they are tithi (the lunar day), vara (the weekday), nakshatra (the lunar mansion the Moon is in), yoga (a combination of Sun and Moon longitudes) and karana (half a tithi). Together they are what a traditional Hindu calendar is built from.
Four of the five are astronomy. A tithi is the span in which the Moon gains twelve degrees on the Sun — variable in length, between about 19 and 26 hours, which is why tithis drift against clock dates and festival dates move each year.
Location matters more than most sources admit. A tithi begins at a precise instant in universal time, and which local date that instant lands on depends on your longitude — so a tithi starting late evening in Delhi has already begun the previous day in New York. Arivyah computes for the place you give rather than publishing a fixed-city table.
Calculate the Panchang for any date and place
The five limbs of the Vedic almanac. Because tithi and karana depend on the Moon's angle from the Sun, they change through the day and by location.
What it is called
Vedic astrology reached the English-speaking world through several routes, so most concepts here carry a Sanskrit name and one or two translations. They are the same thing.
- Panchangalso called panchanga, Hindu calendar, Vedic almanac
- The five limbs of a day: tithi, vara, nakshatra, yoga and karana. The basis of the traditional calendar.
- Tithialso called lunar day
- The span in which the Moon gains 12° on the Sun. Between roughly 19 and 26 hours, so it drifts against clock days.
- Pakshaalso called lunar fortnight
- Shukla paksha waxes from new to full Moon; krishna paksha wanes from full back to new. Fifteen tithis each.
- Varaalso called weekday
- The seven weekdays, each ruled by a graha — Sunday the Sun, Monday the Moon, and so on. The one limb that needs no calculation.
- Karanaalso called half-tithi
- Half of a tithi, so 60 in a lunar month, cycling through eleven named karanas.
Five limbs, four of them calculated
The panchang is not a list of predictions. It is a set of astronomical facts about where the Sun and Moon are relative to each other, dressed in traditional names.
- chevron_rightTithi — the lunar day — the Moon's angular distance ahead of the Sun, divided into 30 steps of 12°. Computed from both positions, and variable in length because neither body moves at a constant apparent speed.
- chevron_rightVara — the weekday — the ordinary seven-day week, each day assigned a ruling graha. The only limb that requires no astronomy, though the traditional day boundary is sunrise rather than midnight.
- chevron_rightNakshatra — the Moon's mansion — which of the 27 lunar mansions the Moon occupies today. The same division used for your birth nakshatra, applied to now instead of then.
- chevron_rightYoga — Sun plus Moon — the two longitudes added and divided into 27 parts. A purely derived figure with a traditional name attached to each part.
- chevron_rightKarana — half a tithi — the same Sun–Moon separation at twice the resolution: 6° steps rather than 12°, cycling through eleven names across a lunar month.
Why location changes the answer
This is the part most panchang sources handle badly, and it is worth understanding because it explains most of the disagreements you will find.
A tithi does not begin at midnight. It begins at the precise moment the Moon reaches a particular angular distance from the Sun — a single instant, the same instant everywhere on Earth. What differs is the local date and time that instant corresponds to. If a tithi begins at 02:40 UTC, that is early morning in India and the previous evening in North America. The tithi is the same; the calendar day it lands on is not.
Traditional reckoning compounds this by starting the day at sunrise rather than midnight, and sunrise depends on both your latitude and the season. So a panchang computed for one city is genuinely wrong for another, and the further apart they are the more wrong it gets.
Arivyah computes the five limbs for the place you give rather than publishing a fixed-city table. That is the honest version, and for anyone outside India it is often a different answer from the one they were reading.
Where to go next
Each of these reads a different part of the same birth data, so once one is computed the rest need nothing more from you.
Find your own birth nakshatra
The same 27 divisions, applied to your birth Moon rather than today's.
See today's transits against your chart
The panchang describes the day for everyone; transits describe it for you.
Keep a journal stamped with the day's panchang
Write a few lines and Arivyah records the tithi and Moon beside it.
Calculate your Moon sign
Where today's Moon sits relative to your natal one is what gochara reads.
Check which dasha period you are in
The longer season underneath the day.
Generate your full birth chart
Including the panchang of the day you were born.
Questions
What is a panchang?add
The Vedic almanac for a given day, in five parts — panchang means 'five limbs'. Those five are tithi (the lunar day), vara (the weekday), nakshatra (the lunar mansion the Moon is in), yoga (a combination of Sun and Moon longitudes) and karana (a half-tithi). Together they describe the quality of a day in the traditional scheme, and they are what a Hindu calendar is actually built from.
What is a tithi?add
A lunar day: the time it takes the Moon to gain twelve degrees on the Sun. Because both move at varying speeds, a tithi is not a fixed length — it runs from about 19 to 26 hours. That is why tithis drift against clock dates and why a festival date moves each year. There are 30 in a lunar month, 15 in the waxing fortnight and 15 in the waning.
What are paksha, shukla and krishna?add
Paksha means fortnight. Shukla paksha is the waxing half, from new Moon to full; krishna paksha is the waning half, from full back to new. Most observances are named by tithi and paksha together — Ekadashi in shukla paksha is a different day from Ekadashi in krishna paksha.
Why does your panchang differ from the one I usually read?add
Almost always location, sometimes ayanamsa. A tithi begins at a precise moment in universal time, and which local date that moment falls on depends on your longitude and timezone — so a tithi that starts late evening in Delhi has already started the previous day in New York. Most panchang sites publish for a fixed Indian city. Arivyah computes for the location you give. The other source of difference is the ayanamsa; Arivyah uses Lahiri, which is the standard, but a source using a different one will place the nakshatra differently.
What is yoga in a panchang?add
Not the physical practice. Here it is one of 27 combinations derived by adding the Sun's and Moon's longitudes and dividing the total into 27 parts. Each has a traditional name and character. It is unrelated to the yoga of asanas, and also unrelated to the yogas — planetary combinations — found in a birth chart, which is three different meanings for one word.
Is the panchang used for choosing dates?add
Yes — that is muhurta, the practice of selecting a favourable time to begin something. It reads the five limbs together with the Moon's position and the planetary hours. Arivyah reports the five limbs and what tradition associates with them; it does not claim a day will produce a particular outcome, because that is interpretation rather than calculation.
How this is calculated
The arithmetic, and where it stops
The Sun's and Moon's positions are computed from Swiss Ephemeris data for the moment and place given, then converted to sidereal longitudes with the Lahiri ayanamsa. Tithi is the Moon–Sun separation in 12° steps, karana in 6° steps, yoga the sum of the two longitudes in 27 parts, and nakshatra the Moon's own position in 27 parts. Every limb but the weekday is arithmetic on measured positions.
Everything is computed for the location supplied rather than for a fixed reference city, because tithi boundaries are instants in universal time and fall on different local dates at different longitudes. Timezone is resolved from the place.
What a tithi or yoga is said to favour is classical interpretation, reported as tradition. Arivyah does not claim a day will produce a particular outcome.
Positions are astronomy and can be checked against any ephemeris. What a position is said to mean is astrological interpretation, and this site presents it as tradition rather than as established fact. How every chart here is calculated.
Today's five limbs, for your location
Tithi, paksha, vara, nakshatra, yoga and karana, computed from ephemeris data — and stamped beside your journal entries if you keep one.