Birth Chart (Kundli)

The panel above says what this calculator returns. This section explains where each part comes from: what the classical texts say a birth chart is, exactly how this engine computes one, how to read every kind of result it can give, what changes when the birth time or place is missing, and how far a few minutes of clock error can move the answer. Every number quoted below was produced by running the engine, and every classical statement is tied to a chapter and sloka. To cast your own chart, use the free birth chart page; no account is needed.

What a birth chart is, in the texts this engine reads

Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra (BPHS) opens its account of the grahas with the frame everything else hangs on (Ch. 3 Sl. 4-6). The zodiac is divided two ways: into 27 nakshatras counted from Ashwini, and into 12 equal rashis counted from Mesha (Aries). Grahas are the bodies that move through them. The rashi rising in the east at birth is the Lagna, and BPHS says a person's good and bad effects are read from the Lagna and from the grahas joining and separating. A birth chart is that frame filled in for one moment and one place.

Two more lines describe the method. Ch. 3 Sl. 8-9 tell the astrologer to take the grahas' positions for the given time by Drikganit, computation that agrees with what is observed in the sky, and to find the Lagna from the rising durations of the rashis at the birth place. Ch. 5 Sl. 21-24 makes the point sharper: the natal Lagna is calculated for the birth place, while the special lagnas of that chapter are common to all places. That is why this calculator asks for a place at all. The graha positions are the same for everyone born at the same instant; the Lagna is not.

The translator's note added to Ch. 3 gives the scale of that dependence: a rashi takes roughly two hours to cross the horizon, so each degree takes about four minutes, and the real duration depends on the latitude. Further down this page that claim is measured for four cities on one day.

BPHS names nine grahas (Ch. 3 Sl. 10) and gives each a domain (Sl. 12-13), a seat in a planetary cabinet (Sl. 14-15) and a natural nature, benefic or malefic (Sl. 11). The engine computes all nine; each has its own page:

• Sun (Surya): the soul; royal in the cabinet; a natural malefic.
• Moon (Chandra): the mind; royal; a benefic when waxing and a malefic when waning.
• Mars (Mangal): strength; the army chief; a malefic.
• Mercury (Budh): speech; the prince-apparent; a benefic, but a malefic when joined with a malefic.
• Jupiter (Guru): knowledge and happiness; a minister; a benefic.
• Venus (Shukra): potency; a minister; a benefic.
• Saturn (Shani): grief; the servant; a malefic.
• Rahu: the Moon's ascending node; with Ketu, the army of the cabinet; a malefic.
• Ketu: the descending node, always opposite Rahu; a malefic.

Two of those natures are conditional, so they belong to the reading rather than to the table. The engine's yoga tests use a fixed list, with Jupiter, Venus, Mercury and the Moon as benefics and the Sun, Mars, Saturn, Rahu and Ketu as malefics; they do not apply the waxing and waning rule or Mercury's company. The worked chart below shows both conditions at work.

What the result contains, and what each part needs

The result is one response from the server, laid out on the birth chart page in tiers. This table lists each part, the input it needs, and the engine function that produces it, so you can tell which parts of your own result are complete.

The rule behind the middle rows is written into the handler: an Ascendant needs a time and a place, and with either one missing there is no Ascendant at all, not a weaker one. Houses and yogas are built on the Ascendant, so they go with it. The engine is never handed a placeholder coordinate to build houses from; without a resolved place, the chart is cast with no houses rather than from a default location.

How the engine computes the chart, step by step

The method is the same for every chart. In order:

1. 1.Your date, clock time and zone become one UTC instant, then a Julian Day.
2. 2.The Sun, the Moon and the five visible planets are computed for that instant as tropical longitudes.
3. 3.Rahu is the Moon's mean ascending node; Ketu is placed exactly 180 degrees from it.
4. 4.The Lahiri ayanamsa for that date is subtracted, which turns every tropical longitude into a sidereal one.
5. 5.Each sidereal longitude is cut into a sign, a nakshatra, a pada and a nakshatra lord.
6. 6.With a time and a resolved place, the rising degree is computed and the twelve whole-sign houses are laid out from it.
7. 7.The Moon's sidereal longitude starts the Vimshottari timeline, and the period containing today is looked up.

From your clock to one instant

A place picked from the suggestion list carries its coordinates and its IANA time zone, such as Asia/Kolkata. A typed place is looked up on the server: first in a bundled list of cities, then through the Open-Meteo geocoder. When a zone is known, the engine uses the offset that zone actually had at your birth instant, daylight saving included. Two clock times have no single answer and follow a fixed convention: a time repeated when clocks went back is read as the earlier of its two instants, and a time skipped when clocks went forward is read with the offset in force before the skip. When there is no zone and no offset at all, India Standard Time (+5:30) is assumed and the result says so. When there is no birth time, the chart is cast at 12:00 local time, the midpoint of the unknown day.

The zone matters more than it looks. A birth in London on 15 July 1990 at 10:00 falls in British Summer Time, an hour ahead of GMT. Run with the Europe/London zone, the engine gives a Leo Ascendant at 20.66 degrees. Run with a fixed offset of zero, the same clock time becomes a real instant one hour later and the Ascendant moves to Virgo 1.25: every graha shifts back one house, one of the yogas changes, and the start of the Moon mahadasha moves from May 2026 to August 2025. That is why the engine prefers a zone name to a fixed number.

The positions

The Sun comes from Meeus's solar formula and the Moon from the 35 principal terms of Meeus's Table 47.A (Astronomical Algorithms, 2nd edition). Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn come from the JPL/Standish Keplerian elements, which are stated for the years 1800 to 2050; the calculator accepts birth dates from 1900. Uranus, Neptune and Pluto are not computed, and neither are the shadow points of BPHS Ch. 3 Sl. 61-70 such as Dhuma and Gulika. Positions are geocentric, so your birth place does not change any graha's longitude; it fixes the Ascendant and nothing else.

The project's own method notes describe this layer as accurate enough to resolve a nakshatra, 13 degrees 20 minutes wide, and the dasha balance, but not as a full ephemeris, and they name planetary positions beyond the Sun and Moon, retrograde status and fine divisional charts as the places a fuller ephemeris would be needed. No accuracy figure for planetary positions is claimed as tested; the methodology page says the same. Swiss Ephemeris is not used.

From tropical to sidereal

Astronomy measures longitude from the equinox, which drifts backwards against the stars by about 50 seconds of arc a year. Vedic astrology measures from a fixed point among the stars, and the gap between the two zero points is the ayanamsa. This engine uses Lahiri (Chitrapaksha) as a straight line from the year 2000: 23.85306 degrees at the J2000 epoch (1 January 2000), plus 0.0139601 degrees per year. For the worked chart below, born in August 1994, that comes to 23.7779 degrees. You can compute it for any date on the ayanamsa calculator.

It is also why a Western horoscope and this chart usually name different signs. The worked chart's Sun is at sidereal Cancer 27.26; add the ayanamsa back and the tropical Sun is at Leo 21.04, so a newspaper horoscope would file this person under Leo. Neither is a miscalculation; they measure from different zero points. Why your rashi is not your star sign takes this further, and why two apps disagree on your nakshatra covers the choices other tools make.

Sign, nakshatra, pada and the nakshatra lord

Each sidereal longitude is cut three ways, all counted from 0 degrees Aries. The sign is the longitude divided by 30. The nakshatra is the longitude divided by 13 degrees 20 minutes, one of 27. The pada is the quarter of that nakshatra, 3 degrees 20 minutes wide. The nakshatra lord follows the Vimshottari order, which BPHS Ch. 46 Sl. 12-14 gives starting from Krittika with the Sun; counted from Ashwini, the same cycle starts with Ketu and runs three times around the zodiac.

The Moon's nakshatra lord is the most-used value in this result, because it starts the dasha. For the Moon's nakshatra on its own, with the day-boundary check, use the nakshatra calculator; for the finer ninefold split inside a nakshatra, the sub-lord calculator.

The Ascendant and the houses

The rising degree uses the standard formula: local sidereal time (Greenwich sidereal time plus your longitude) and the tilt of the Earth's axis give the point of the ecliptic on the eastern horizon at your latitude, which is then made sidereal like everything else. Houses are whole-sign: the sign holding the Ascendant is the 1st house whatever the degree, the next sign is the 2nd, and so on. A graha's house is how many signs it sits from the rising sign, counting the rising sign as one. The Lagna calculator gives the rising degree on its own.

This is a choice, and not every source makes it. BPHS itself speaks of a bhava's madhya, its cusp, in Ch. 4 Sl. 25-30, and the case studies in Advanced Predictive Astrology print a Nirayana Bhava Chalit (cuspal) table beside each rasi chart. This engine computes no cusps. If another tool shows a graha one house away from where this one does, a cusp-based house system is one likely reason, along with the ayanamsa and the time zone.

Retrograde and combust

A graha is marked retrograde when its apparent longitude, measured half a day before and half a day after your birth instant, is moving backwards. The Sun and Moon never appear retrograde from the Earth and are stated as not retrograde; Rahu and Ketu are always marked retrograde by convention, since the mean node moves steadily backwards. A graha is marked combust when it sits within a fixed distance of the Sun:

Saravali names the states these flags point to. In Ch. 5 Sl. 2-4 a combust graha is in Vikala, the mutilated state, and Sl. 27 says a combust graha loses its power to give good results. On retrograde motion Saravali is mixed: Sl. 39 reads a retrograde benefic as strong and a retrograde malefic as bringing purposeless wandering, and Sl. 14 records a view held by some that a graha retrograde in its exaltation sign produces no effect. This calculator reports the flags; it does not change its dignity labels for them.

Dignity: the label beside each graha

Each of the seven classical grahas gets one dignity label. The engine checks in a fixed order and stops at the first match: Exalted if the graha is anywhere in its exaltation sign (Mercury only below 15 degrees of Virgo); Moolatrikona if it is inside its Moolatrikona range; Debilitated if it is in its debilitation sign; Own sign if it is in a sign it rules; otherwise Friendly, Neutral or Enemy sign, from the graha's friendship with the lord of the sign it occupies. Rahu and Ketu get no label. The fixed tables are these:

Read the table against the label you get, because one row disagrees. For the Sun, BPHS and Saravali both put Moolatrikona in the first 20 degrees of Leo and own sign in the rest, and the engine follows them (it had the two reversed until October 2026). For Venus the sources give different ranges in Libra; the engine follows BPHS, the first 15 degrees (since October 2026; it used 27 to 30 before). Two more effects come from the order of checks. Because Exalted is tested first and covers the whole sign, the engine never returns Moolatrikona for the Moon, whose Moolatrikona range lies inside its exaltation sign, and it calls a graha Exalted at any degree of that sign. Mercury is the one exception: Exalted below 15 degrees of Virgo, Moolatrikona from 15 to 20, Own sign from 20. The deepest degrees in the table are used elsewhere in the engine, not for this label.

The labels also decide the strongest and weakest marks. The engine ranks the seven on a ladder its code takes from Kannan: Exalted and Moolatrikona at full strength, Own sign three quarters, Friendly five eighths, Neutral one half, Enemy sign and Debilitated nil, with Debilitated ranked below Enemy. BPHS Ch. 3 Sl. 59-60 grades the same states differently: full in exaltation, three quarters in Moolatrikona, one half in own sign, one quarter in a friend's sign, one eighth in a neutral's, and nil in debilitation or an enemy's sign. The order is almost the same; the gaps are not, and BPHS puts Moolatrikona below exaltation where the engine makes them equal. When two grahas tie, the first in the order Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, Saturn is named.

Friendly, Neutral and Enemy come from a fivefold friendship grade between the graha and the lord of the sign it occupies. BPHS builds that grade from two layers (Ch. 3 Sl. 55-58): a natural friendship, and a temporary one that depends on where the two grahas actually sit in your chart, a graha in the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 10th, 11th or 12th from another being its temporary friend. The engine combines both layers: for the temporary half it looks at where the sign's lord actually sits in your chart, so the same graha in the same sign can be Friendly in one chart and Neutral in another. The worked chart below has an example.

The twelve houses, as BPHS reads them

BPHS Ch. 7 Sl. 33-38 sorts the houses into classes that the rest of the text, and the yoga tests in this engine, lean on. The 1st, 4th, 7th and 10th are kendras (angles). The 2nd, 5th, 8th and 11th are panapharas, and the 3rd, 6th, 9th and 12th apoklimas. The 5th and 9th are konas (trines), the 6th, 8th and 12th are dusthanas, and the 3rd, 6th, 10th and 11th are upachayas. Ch. 32 Sl. 35-37 calls the kendras and konas the auspicious houses and the 6th, 8th and 12th the difficult ones.

Ch. 11 Sl. 2-13 then lists what each house is consulted for. The list below is selected from those slokas, in their order, with each house's significator graha from Ch. 32 Sl. 31-34:

• 1st, Tanu: physique, appearance, intellect, vigour, happiness and grief, and innate nature. Significator: the Sun.
• 2nd, Dhana: wealth, food grains, family, metals and precious stones. Significator: Jupiter.
• 3rd, Sahaja: valour, attendants, brothers and sisters, initiation and journeys. Significator: Mars.
• 4th, Bandhu or Sukha: conveyances, relatives, mother, happiness, treasure, lands and buildings. Significator: the Moon.
• 5th, Putra: sacred spells, learning, knowledge, children, authority and loss of position. Significator: Jupiter.
• 6th, Ari: maternal uncle, enemies, ulcers and a stepmother. Significator: Mars.
• 7th, Yuvati: spouse, travel and trade. Significator: Venus.
• 8th, Randhra: longevity, battles, forts, wealth left by the dead, and things past and to come. Significator: Saturn.
• 9th, Dharma: fortune, religion, the spouse's brother, the brother's wife, and pilgrimages. Significator: Jupiter.
• 10th, Karma: authority, position, profession, honour, father, living abroad and debts. Significator: Mercury.
• 11th, Labha: income, prosperity, livestock, articles of every kind, and the son's wife. Significator: Jupiter.
• 12th, Vyaya: expenses and the history of enemies. Significator: Saturn.

Sl. 14-16 adds how a house is judged: it prospers when a benefic joins or aspects it and its lord is well placed, and it suffers when its lord does not aspect it, sits with a malefic or with a lord of the 3rd, 6th, 8th, 11th or 12th, or is in a weak state. This calculator lists which sign falls in each house and which grahas sit there; it does not score houses. The signed-in Kundali page adds house-by-house readings and the planet-in-house effects from the Bhrigu Sutras, all from the same computed chart.

A worked chart: 14 August 1994, 06:42, Ahmedabad

The sample person used across this site's calculator pages was born on 14 August 1994 at 06:42 in Ahmedabad (23.0225 N, 72.5714 E, zone Asia/Kolkata). The birth chart handler was run for that input on 2 October 2026. The dasha section depends on the day it is run; everything else is fixed. All nine grahas, as returned:

Start with the three anchors. The Sun rose in Ahmedabad that morning at 06:15:31, about 26 minutes before the birth, and at sunrise the Ascendant sat at 116.41 degrees, just behind the Sun at 117.25. By 06:42 the turning sky had carried the rising degree past the end of Cancer into Leo, while the Sun was still at Cancer 27. With whole-sign houses that puts the Sun's sign in the 12th house; a birth eleven minutes earlier puts the Sun in the 1st. The Moon is in Libra in Vishakha, so the Janma Nakshatra is Vishakha and its lord, Jupiter, starts the dasha. The engine's line for this chart reads: 'Born under Vishakha, you tend to be restless and wide-ranging in interests, sociable but not always easy to fully trust.' Its code says the 27 lines are paraphrased from Jyotisha-Siddhanta-Sara Ch. IV, with that text's caste classifications and its appearance and marriage predictions left out. More on this star is on the Vishakha page, and on the rising sign on the Leo page.

The houses are then a matter of counting from Leo. The 2nd (Virgo) holds Venus. The 3rd (Libra) holds three: the Moon, Jupiter and Rahu. The 7th (Aquarius) holds Saturn, the 9th (Aries) Ketu, the 11th (Gemini) Mars, and the 12th (Cancer) the Sun and Mercury. The 1st, 4th, 5th, 6th, 8th and 10th are empty, which is common and says nothing on its own; an empty house still has a sign and a lord to read. For one placement in depth, see Saturn in the 7th house.

The dignity column shows both ends of the ladder. Saturn at Aquarius 16.50 is inside its Moolatrikona range of 0 to 20 degrees, the top grade, so it is marked strongest. Venus in Virgo is debilitated, the bottom grade, so it is marked weakest. None comes back as Enemy sign: the Sun and the Moon are Friendly, and Mars, Mercury and Jupiter Neutral. This is where the friendship note above matters. Take the Moon in Libra. Libra's lord is Venus, naturally neutral to the Moon, and Venus sits in Virgo, the 12th sign from the Moon, which BPHS Ch. 3 Sl. 56 counts as a temporary friend. Neutral plus friend makes friend under Sl. 57-58, so the Moon reads Friendly sign. Mars in Gemini goes the other way: Mercury is its natural enemy but sits in Cancer, the 2nd sign from Mars, a temporary friend, and enmity on one count with friendship on the other gives Neutral.

Two flags and two conditional natures complete the picture. Mercury is 1.16 degrees from the Sun, combust under the engine's 14-degree distance and under the 8½ degrees in the Bhrigu Sutras introduction alike. Mercury is also joined with the Sun, a natural malefic, which by BPHS Ch. 3 Sl. 11 makes Mercury act as a malefic in this chart. Saturn is retrograde, 160.69 degrees from the Sun. The Moon is 87.38 degrees ahead of the Sun, in the eighth tithi of the bright half, so it is waxing and counts as a benefic under the same sloka.

The element count covers all nine grahas: Air 5 (the Moon, Jupiter and Rahu in Libra, Mars in Gemini, Saturn in Aquarius), Water 2, Earth 1 and Fire 1. The one-sentence read joins that count to the Lagna and the Moon's nakshatra, and calls the chart Air-dominant with 'explorer' instincts. That last word is not astrological. It is the title of Mulank 5, the birth-day number, which the numbers rail shows beside a Bhagyank of 9 and a Personal Year of 5 for 2026; the Mulank and Bhagyank article explains both. BPHS Ch. 4 names the element of Aries (fiery), Taurus (earthy), Gemini (airy) and Cancer (watery), and of Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius and Pisces, in the same repeating fire, earth, air, water order the engine applies to all twelve signs.

The dasha in the worked chart

The Moon is at 204.64 degrees sidereal. Vishakha runs from 200 degrees to 213 degrees 20 minutes, so the Moon is 4.64 degrees in, 34.8 percent of the way through. Vishakha's lord is Jupiter, whose full mahadasha is 16 years; the engine subtracts the elapsed share and gives Jupiter the remaining 65.2 percent, 10.43 years. The rest of the sequence follows in fixed order. In Indian Standard Time:

• Jupiter: from birth to 18 January 2005, the partial first period.
• Saturn, 19 years: 18 January 2005 to 19 January 2024.
• Mercury, 17 years: 19 January 2024 to 18 January 2041, running on 2 October 2026.
• Ketu, 7 years: from 18 January 2041, the next mahadasha the result shows.

Inside Mercury the antardashas run in the same order, starting from Mercury itself, each taking a share in proportion to its own years: Mercury until 16 June 2026, then Ketu until 13 June 2027, then Venus until 13 April 2030. So on the day this was run, the result reads Mercury mahadasha, Ketu antardasha. The engine counts a dasha year as 365.2425 days. What a Mahadasha is and Antardasha and Pratyantardasha explain the system, the Vimshottari calculator lists the whole timeline, and Mercury mahadasha is the period this person is in.

One detail of method is worth knowing. BPHS Ch. 46 Sl. 16 measures the elapsed part of the first dasha by time: the time the Moon has already spent in the birth nakshatra, divided by the whole time it spends there. The engine measures it by arc: degrees travelled, divided by 13 degrees 20 minutes. The two agree only when the Moon's speed is steady through the nakshatra. For this chart the engine's own Moon was traced through Vishakha: it entered at 22:49 IST on 13 August and left at 21:29 IST on 14 August, 22.67 hours. By time, 34.76 percent had elapsed at birth; by arc, 34.80 percent; and the dasha dates differ by 2.2 days. Small here, and worth knowing when two tools disagree by a few days.

The yogas in the worked chart

With an Ascendant, the engine ran its yoga tests and returned five. Each card names the yoga and gives two lines: the placement that triggered it, and the classical reading of such a placement. Read the first line as a fact about the chart and the second as what tradition says about that fact. Here is each one against its source, with one yoga that does not form:

• Sasa Yoga: Saturn in Moolatrikona in Aquarius, in the 7th house, a kendra. BPHS Ch. 75 Sl. 1-2 forms the five Panchamahapurusha yogas when Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus or Saturn is in its own or exaltation sign in a kendra from the Lagna. This matches the text.
• Anapha Yoga: Venus in the 12th sign from the Moon. BPHS Ch. 37 Sl. 7-10 forms Anapha from any graha other than the Sun in the 12th from the Moon. This matches the text.
• Pasa Yoga: the seven classical grahas occupy exactly five signs. Saravali Ch. 21 Sl. 19 names seven counting yogas by the number of signs occupied, five being Pasa. This matches the text.
• Vasi Yoga: Mars in the 12th sign from the Sun. BPHS Ch. 38 Sl. 1 calls a graha other than the Moon in the 12th from the Sun Vosi, and Sl. 4 adds that its good effects come when benefics form it, while malefics give the contrary. Mars is a natural malefic, and the engine's reading does not make that distinction.
• Gaj Kesari Yoga: Jupiter and the Moon in the same sign, the 1st from the Moon and so a kendra from it. BPHS Ch. 36 Sl. 3-4 adds conditions, and the engine tests them all: Jupiter is joined with a benefic, the Moon, and is free of debilitation, combustion and an inimical sign. The engine grades Jupiter in Libra Neutral, not Enemy: Venus, the lord of Libra, is Jupiter's natural enemy but sits in the 12th sign from it, a temporary friend. This matches the text.
• No Sarpa Yoga: Saturn is the only graha in a kendra. BPHS Ch. 35 Sl. 8 asks for three kendras occupied by malefics, and Saravali Ch. 21 Sl. 18 for malefics in all the angles; the engine follows BPHS, so one Saturn in one kendra does not qualify.

That spread is what a yoga list is: a set of mechanical tests, some matching their source exactly and some testing only part of it. The yogas calculator returns the same list on its own, and what a yoga in your chart means shows how common each one is across many charts.

How much the birth time moves the chart

The translator's note in BPHS Ch. 3 says a rashi takes about two hours to rise, depending on latitude. Here is that claim measured with this engine: the minutes each sidereal sign spent rising on the eastern horizon on 14 August 1994, sampled every ten seconds.

Two things stand out. The average is close to the two hours the note gives, but no sign takes exactly two hours: in Ahmedabad Pisces rises in 90.7 minutes and Cancer and Scorpio in 136. And the spread widens with latitude, from 99.7 to 131.8 minutes in Chennai to 51.2 to 170.8 in London. Near the equator a few minutes of error is a smaller share of a sign; far north, a quickly rising sign such as Pisces can pass in under an hour.

Now the sample birth. In Ahmedabad that morning Leo began rising at 06:31:40, so the recorded 06:42 is 10 minutes 20 seconds into Leo, and the Ascendant is only 2.33 degrees into the sign. Run the same chart for 06:31 and the Ascendant is Cancer 29.87. The Sun and Mercury move from the 12th house to the 1st, Saturn from the 7th to the 8th, and every other graha one house on. Sasa Yoga disappears, because Saturn is no longer in a kendra, and three others appear: Argala Raj, Sarala and Kendra-Kona Raj Yoga. The start of the Mercury mahadasha moves from 19 January to 6 March 2024. Eleven minutes of clock error changes the Lagna, every house and much of the yoga list.

The Moon is the other moving part. On this date it travelled 14.12 degrees a day, faster than its average, which took it through all of Vishakha in 22.67 hours and through a pada in under six hours. Each hour of error in the birth time moves the Moon about 0.59 degrees, and for this chart that slides every dasha date by about 258 days. The birth time article covers what a missing time costs in general, and the sub-lord article shows the same effect at a finer scale.

Reading a result that has limits

Every result carries a panel headed 'What this reading can and cannot say'. It lists what the server flagged as missing or assumed, and it is the one place on the page that says why a part is absent. What each line means:

When no time is given and the Moon stayed in one nakshatra from 00:00 to 23:59 local time, the panel says so instead, and the nakshatra is certain. When every input is complete, the panel says that nothing in the reading is degraded.

Run the sample person with the date alone and the panel lists five lines: no time, no place, no ascendant, the zone assumed, and the Moon crossing a boundary. The Moon was in Vishakha at the start of 14 August and in Anuradha at the end, and it moved from Libra into Scorpio, so neither the nakshatra nor the Moon sign is settled. Cast at noon, the Moon is at Libra 27.76, still in Vishakha, so the dasha still starts with Jupiter, but the Mercury mahadasha now begins on 22 April 2020 instead of 19 January 2024, and the running antardasha is the Sun's rather than Ketu's. Give the time but not the place and the Moon comes back exactly as in the full chart, Libra 24.64, because no graha position depends on where you were born; only the Ascendant, the houses and the yogas are missing.

What this calculator does not compute

The birth chart is the base layer. Several things built on it are separate calculators, and a few are not computed anywhere in the app:

• Divisional charts. BPHS Ch. 7 Sl. 1-8 reads the physique from the Lagna chart and other matters from fifteen further divisions. Each has its own calculator here, such as the Navamsa (D9) and the Dashamsa (D10); the Navamsa article explains why they need the minute.
• Strength scores beyond dignity: Shad Bala, Ashtakavarga and Vimshopaka Bala.
• Doshas and transits: Mangal Dosha, Kaal Sarp Dosha, Sade Sati and Gochar each read this chart against a rule or against today's sky.
• Aspects. BPHS Ch. 26 evaluates graha drishti; this result lists placements, not aspects.
• The shadow points of BPHS Ch. 3 Sl. 61-70, such as Dhuma, Vyatipata and Gulika, and the special lagnas of Ch. 5 (Bhava, Hora and Ghati Lagna). Neither is computed in this app.
• Uranus, Neptune, Pluto and house cusps, as described above.
• Remedies. No gemstone, mantra, ritual or donation is recommended anywhere in this app, by design.

Where this chart goes next

The same chart function sits under almost every astrology feature in the app, so this chart is the one the other pages read. The Moon feeds the Moon sign, the Vimshottari dasha and Sade Sati; the Sun feeds the Sun sign; the Ascendant feeds the Lagna, every divisional chart and the yoga list; and the graha longitudes feed the Jaimini Chara Karakas. Matching two people runs this engine twice: see the match tool and Kundli matching.

With an account, the chart is saved with your profile, and the signed-in Kundali page adds divisional charts, doshas, Shad Bala, Ashtakavarga, Jaimini points and planet-in-house readings to it. Timing runs the dasha forward, the AI chat answers questions from the same placements, and the accuracy page counts how often readings built on it landed, from outcomes you log yourself. The convergence page sets this astrology against numerology for your next twelve months. On this public page nothing you enter is stored; a typed place that is not in the bundled list is sent to the Open-Meteo geocoder to be resolved, and the privacy policy covers the rest.

Questions

Why does this chart give a different sign from my newspaper horoscope?

Newspaper horoscopes use the tropical zodiac, measured from the equinox. This chart is sidereal, measured from the stars, and the gap between the two, the ayanamsa, is about 24 degrees: 23.78 in 1994 and 24.23 in 2026. A Sun in roughly the first 24 degrees of a tropical sign usually falls in the previous sidereal sign. The worked chart's Sun is Leo 21 tropically and Cancer 27 here.

Do I need my exact birth time?

For the nine grahas, the dignities, the numbers and usually the dasha, no: a date is enough, and the panel tells you when the Moon's nakshatra is unsettled. For the Ascendant, the houses and the yogas, yes, together with a place. A sign can rise in under 90 minutes in parts of India, so a time remembered to the nearest hour can fall in either of two Lagnas.

Why does another app show a different Ascendant or nakshatra?

Usually one of four things: a different ayanamsa, a different time-zone offset (daylight saving is the commonest slip), the true node instead of the mean node for Rahu and Ketu, or a cusp-based house system instead of whole-sign houses. This engine uses Lahiri, the zone's real offset at your birth instant, the mean node and whole-sign houses. The nakshatra disagreement article works through a case.

What does whole-sign house mean?

The whole rising sign is the 1st house, whatever degree of it is rising, and each following sign is the next house. A graha's house is the count of signs from the rising sign. No cusp degrees are computed.

Why are Rahu and Ketu always retrograde?

They are not bodies but the two points where the Moon's path crosses the Sun's. The engine uses the mean node, which moves steadily backwards through the zodiac, so both are always marked retrograde, and Ketu is always exactly opposite Rahu.

My Sun is in Leo but the label says Own sign, not Moolatrikona. Why?

Because it is at 20 degrees or more. BPHS Ch. 3 Sl. 51-54 and Saravali Ch. 5 Sl. 21-24 both put the Sun's Moolatrikona in the first 20 degrees of Leo, and the engine follows them; from 20 degrees the Sun is in its own sign. The dignity table above lists every range.

Does the name field change anything?

Not any number on this page. Mulank, Bhagyank and the Personal Year come from the birth date alone; the name is only echoed back with your inputs. Numbers from a name are on the name number calculator.

Is anything I enter saved?

No. The public chart endpoint creates no record and stores no birth detail. The one outbound call is the place lookup: a typed place that is not in the bundled city list is sent to the Open-Meteo geocoder to find its coordinates.

Which time zone are the dasha dates in?

The server returns each boundary as an exact instant, and the page shows its calendar date in your browser's time zone, so near midnight two readers in different zones can see dates a day apart. The dates on this page are in Indian Standard Time.

Does the chart predict what will happen to me?

It reports where the grahas were and which classical rules their positions meet. The yoga readings and the Janma Nakshatra line are classical readings, attributed as such. Nothing on this page forecasts events, and none of it is medical, legal or financial advice. To keep the chart and use it across the app, start at onboarding.

What is the earliest birth date it accepts?

1 January 1900; dates in the future are refused. The planetary elements the engine uses are stated for 1800 to 2050.