A daily panchanga may place a time beside a nakshatra name. In India’s Rashtriya Panchang, that time is the ending moment of the listed interval. The Moon then enters the next of the twenty-seven 13°20′ sidereal divisions. It is easy to misread the time as the interval’s start, a sunrise time, or the moment of a visible star encounter; the publication’s explanation rules out those shortcuts.
Read the line in three parts
The line above is a teaching example, not a copied or predicted daily entry. At a 09:00 IST instant on that illustrative date, Pushya would still be the current sector; at 16:00 IST, Aslesha would be current. The real almanac calculates end times from the Moon’s geocentric sidereal longitude and prints its time convention. An actual date must be checked in the dated publication or a calculator with documented settings.
The name order matters: Pushya is eighth in the official list and Aslesha is ninth. At a boundary, the earlier interval ends and the next begins. A rounded display time can conceal seconds near the transition, so avoid inferring a precise birth placement from an end time printed only to the minute.
IST event time and local sunrise answer different questions
The Positional Astronomy Centre states that the end moments for tithi, nakshatra, yoga, and karana are geocentric and printed in Indian Standard Time. Subtracting five hours and thirty minutes converts the printed IST moment to UT in its stated convention. The same instant has different local clock labels around the world. A reader abroad should convert the instant before comparing it with a local birth time.
Sunrise information serves a different purpose. The publication provides sunrise and sunset for adopted stations and uses a sunrise-to-sunrise interval when explaining the notation ahoratra. If a nakshatra covers that whole interval without an ending moment inside it, the daily line can show ahoratra. The underlying Moon transition still occurs at a real instant outside that sunrise span.
End moment
The Moon reaches the next 13°20′ sector boundary. This is a geocentric instant that can be converted between time zones.
Sunrise relation
The calendar decides which local day displays a label. Sunrise depends on location and is not the same as the geocentric transition.
Why two sources may print different times
- Check the year and exact date. A daily label repeats, but the Moon’s transition instant does not recur at one fixed clock time.
- Check IST, UTC, and the viewer’s local zone. Do not compare clock numbers without converting them to the same instant. Some almanac rows extend their hour count beyond 24 to keep the event attached to the prior printed day.
- Check the sidereal origin. The national publication says nakshatra calculation uses a variable ayanamsa; a tool with another origin can shift a transition time.
- Check whether the timestamp is an end or a start. The official printed convention is end time; a web UI may phrase the same boundary as the start of the next sector.
- Check sunrise convention if comparing day labels. A calendar’s day assignment can differ while both sources refer to the same geocentric changeover.
The 27-name atlas gives the sector order; the panchanga introduction explains the other four calendar elements. For a live dated result, use the separate Vedic panchanga calculator with its displayed settings.
Continue through the reference
Sources and calculation notes
- Positional Astronomy Centre, Panchang explanation ↗ — end moments, IST conversion, ahoratra, and ayanamsa
- Positional Astronomy Centre, name table ↗ — Pushya and Aslesha order
- Positional Astronomy Centre, daily 2026 Panchang ↗ — examples of hour counts beyond 24