Today’s Panchāṅgam

Pañcāṅga means "five limbs". A Panchāṅgam is not a horoscope and not a list of predictions — it is an almanac that states five measurable things about a day: the weekday (vāra), the lunar day (tithi), the Moon's constellation (nakṣatra), and two quantities derived from the positions of the Sun and Moon together (yoga and karaṇa). Everything else on this page follows from those five and from sunrise.

Because almost every element is anchored to sunrise, and sunrise is local. A tithi that is running at sunrise in Chennai may already have ended by sunrise in California, which is why an almanac printed in India can put a festival on a different day from the one it falls on here. Rāhu Kālam is one eighth of the day between sunrise and sunset, so it moves with them too. This page computes for the location you choose, in that location's own timezone, with daylight saving handled automatically.

They are periods traditionally set aside for beginning something new. Each is a fixed division of the day between sunrise and sunset that moves with the weekday: Rāhu Kālam and Yamagaṇḍam are one eighth of the day, a Durmuhūrtam is one fifteenth. They are not periods in which nothing may happen — they are periods in which a new undertaking is not traditionally begun. What that means for your own ceremony is a question for Sri Kumar Gurukkal.

No. This page is a reference: it states what a day is and makes no recommendation about it. If your question is "when should we hold this?", the muhūrtham finder takes a ceremony and a date range and offers windows, naming every rule it applied and every element it does not evaluate. Either way the muhūrtham itself is fixed by Sri Kumar Naganathan Gurukkal, not by this website.

Since October 2026 the Sun and Moon are computed from the full planetary theories astronomers use (VSOP87 for the Sun, ELP/MPP02 for the Moon, with nutation and the true Lahiri ayanāṃśa), and every build compares the result with NASA JPL's DE421 ephemeris over 2026–2028: every tithi, nakṣatra, yoga and karaṇa change agrees to within two seconds, and every saṅkrānti — the start of a Tamil month — to within four. Sunrise and sunset agree with an independently written NOAA solar algorithm to a tenth of a minute. What can still differ from a printed Tamil panchāṅgam is convention, not arithmetic: the city it was computed for, how sunrise is defined, and Vākya rather than Thirukkaṇita reckoning. See the methodology page.

Because they are different kinds of statement and adding them together would destroy the difference. Brahma Muhūrta is a period for prayer — it is not a window for beginning a ceremony and this page does not offer it as one. A "nothing in the way" window is daylight clear of the periods in which a new undertaking is not begun, which says nothing is in the way and not that it is the right hour. A ceremony candidate is such a window long enough to hold the whole of a particular rite. And where a favourable period and a restricted one cover the same minutes, this page prints the overlap with the minutes named rather than drawing one colour over the other. Resolving that overlap is Sri Kumar Gurukkal's, not this page's.

From the tables Tamil calendar publishers print, applied to times this page computes. None of them is a position of the sky: the Gowri names follow a weekday table, the Yōgam a weekday-and-star table, the Sūlam a weekday direction, Kari nāḷ a fixed list of days in each Tamil month, and Chandrāṣṭamam the rule that the Moon is in the eighth rāśi from one's own. For each, we compared several publishers and say how far they agree; where they differ — the Kari nāḷ of three months, the last Saturday-night Gowri period — the difference is shown, not hidden. None of these tables has yet been reviewed by Sri Kumar Gurukkal against his own panchāṅgam. Nalla nēram and Nētram/Jīvaṉ are not shown: publishers print conflicting tables and do not state the rule, and an invented value would look exactly like a computed one.

No. Every figure on the page is computed without them. Tārā Balam and Chandra Balam are counted from a birth star and a birth rāśi, so they appear only if you choose to enter one, and what you enter stays in your browser tab: it is not added to the web address, so a link you copy cannot carry it to anyone else; it is not saved; it is not sent anywhere; and it never appears in a calendar file. Reloading the page clears it. Note also that nine of the twenty-seven nakṣatras span two rāśis — for those, a birth star alone does not give a birth rāśi, because it depends on the pāda, which depends on the birth time. Where that happens this page says so and does not guess.

Yes — every occurrence between 2026 and 2028, with its real beginning and end, for the location you chose. The search works on intervals rather than on day labels, which matters more than it sounds: a tithi that begins after one sunrise and ends before the next prevails at no sunrise at all and so has no day label. 2026 has eighteen of those. A search written over day labels returns nothing for them and looks as though it worked. Spelling is forgiving — Ekādaśī, ekadashi and 11 are the same search. Which day a particular festival is kept on is a ritual rule and is not decided here.

This site uses the Drik (observation-based) convention with the Lahiri (Chitrapakṣa) ayanāṃśa. A difference of a few minutes from another almanac is normal; a difference of a day usually means a different convention rather than an error. Where a date matters to your family, confirm it with Gurukkal.