Panchang for Deshnoke
Deshnoke, Rajasthan — tithi, nakshatra, yoga and karana, with sunrise, sunset and Rahu Kaal.
Panchang
- Tithi
- Nakshatra
- Yoga
- Karana
- Rashi
- Sunrise
- Sunset
- Rahu Kaal
The five limbs
Panchang means "five limbs": tithi, vaar, nakshatra, yoga and karana. Together they describe a day in the lunisolar reckoning, and between them they are what an almanac is actually listing.
Tithi is a lunar day — the time the moon takes to gain twelve degrees on the sun. Vaar is the weekday. Nakshatra is the lunar mansion the moon occupies, one of twenty-seven. Yoga is derived from the summed longitudes of sun and moon, and karana is half a tithi.
Why a tithi does not match a calendar day
A tithi is not twenty-four hours. It runs between roughly nineteen and twenty-six hours depending on how fast the moon is moving, so it begins and ends at a different clock time each day, and can start in the middle of an afternoon.
In common usage the tithi running at sunrise is taken as the day's tithi. That is the convention followed here. Because it is fixed to sunrise, the answer can differ between two cities on the same date — a tithi that begins just after sunrise in one city may already have begun before sunrise in another.
What changes by city and what does not
Sunrise, sunset and Rahu Kaal depend on where you are, and those are computed here from the city's own latitude and longitude.
Tithi, nakshatra, yoga and karana are positions of the sun and moon. At a given instant they are the same across the country — what varies is which instant you read them at, and that is set by the local sunrise.
On accuracy
The calculation is drik-siddha — computed from actual positions rather than from mean motions — and uses the Lahiri ayanamsa, the reckoning most Indian almanacs follow.
A few minutes' difference from a printed panchang is normal. Almanacs differ in the horizon correction they apply to sunrise and in the ayanamsa value, and where a family or community follows a particular almanac, that one should be kept.
Common questions
- What is today's tithi in Deshnoke?
- Do the tithi and nakshatra differ from city to city?
- When is Rahu Kaal in Deshnoke?
- Why does this differ from my printed panchang by a few minutes?