Panchangam Today: Tithi, Nakshatra, Yoga, Karana and Vara Explained

The five limbs

Tithi is the lunar day. As the Moon pulls away from the Sun, every 12° of separation completes one tithi — which is why tithis are not 24 hours long and drift against the clock. The cycle runs fifteen tithis in the waxing fortnight (shukla paksha) to full moon, and fifteen in the waning fortnight (krishna paksha) to new moon.

Nakshatra here means the segment the Moon occupies today, and it is the limb that most daily guidance keys off. Yoga is a derived quantity — the combined longitude of Sun and Moon divided into 27 parts — and is read for the general auspiciousness of the day. Karana is simply half a tithi, used mainly in muhurta work.

Why panchangam times are local

The vara — the day itself — begins at local sunrise, not at midnight. Every window derived from the day inherits that anchor, and sunrise varies by longitude and latitude. Chennai and Coimbatore are both in Tamil Nadu and share a clock, but sunrise separates them by roughly twenty minutes, and so does every panchangam window computed for them.

• A panchangam without a location is incomplete — the same date yields different windows in different cities.
• The day runs sunrise to sunrise, so the hours after midnight still belong to the previous vara.
• Because tithi and nakshatra transition at arbitrary clock times, an event just before or after a transition falls under a different reading entirely.

Rahu kalam, yamagandam and kuligai

These are the inauspicious windows most people actually look up. They are not astronomical events — they are a division of the daylight period. The span from sunrise to sunset is cut into eight equal parts, and each weekday assigns one of those parts to Rahu, one to Yama and one to Kuligai. Rahu kalam is conventionally avoided for beginning anything new.

The clock times printed in most almanacs assume a tidy 6am–6pm day. That approximation is close enough in much of Tamil Nadu for most of the year, but it drifts, and it is meaningfully wrong further north. If you are outside Tamil Nadu, or want the window against your own sunrise rather than a reference one, treat a printed table as an approximation and check it against local sunrise and sunset.

Horai: the planetary hours

Horai divides the day differently. Each of the 24 hours from sunrise is ruled by a planet, cycling in the Chaldean order — Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon — and repeating. The first horai after sunrise is always ruled by the planet that rules the weekday, which is exactly why the days are named as they are: Sunday begins with a Sun horai, Monday with a Moon horai, and so on around the week.

In practice horai is used for fine-grained timing within a day already judged acceptable: a Mercury horai for correspondence and negotiation, a Jupiter horai for anything requiring counsel or blessing, a Venus horai for matters of agreement and comfort. Like rahu kalam, each horai is derived from actual sunrise, so its length is not exactly sixty minutes.

What makes a Tamil panchangam distinct

The five limbs are common to all Indian traditions, but the Tamil almanac frames them differently. Years are named from a repeating cycle of sixty (Prabhava through Akshaya) rather than numbered. Months are solar, beginning when the Sun enters a new sign, and carry their own names — Chithirai, Vaikasi, Aani, Aadi, Aavani, Purattasi, Aippasi, Karthigai, Margazhi, Thai, Maasi, Panguni.

• Solar months, so the Tamil new year falls on the Sun’s entry into Aries, in mid-April.
• The sixty-year named cycle instead of an era number.
• Regional observances keyed to solar entries — Thai Pongal, Aadi month, Margazhi.
• Nakshatra names in Tamil, which are not transliterations of the Sanskrit but established Tamil forms.

Panchangam in Zodian

Zodian shows the full day rather than a single headline value. All five limbs come with their transition times, the day’s inauspicious windows are carried from the Tamil almanac, and the horai sequence is computed from your own sunrise and sunset — so each planetary hour has its true, unequal length rather than a rounded sixty minutes.

• All five limbs with exact transition times, not a single value per day.
• Rahu kalam, yamagandam and kuligai for the day, from the Tamil almanac.
• Full horai sequence computed from your location’s sunrise and sunset, each hour its true length.
• Tamil calendar with the sixty-year cycle and Tamil solar months.
• Native Tamil rendering of nakshatra, tithi and planet names — not transliteration.

Honest caveat: panchangam conventions genuinely differ between traditions, and a Tamil almanac will not always agree with a Drik or North Indian one on a given day’s tithi ending or festival date. Zodian follows the Tamil convention with Lahiri ayanamsa; if your family follows a different lineage’s almanac, check it against theirs before making a muhurta decision. Zodian runs free in beta on the web at zodian.in, on iOS via TestFlight, and on Android via the Play Store — the same profiles sync across all three.