Nakshatra (Birth Star)

What a nakshatra is in the texts this engine reads

Brihat Parashara Hora Shastra opens its account of the sky (Ch. 3 Sl. 2-6) by sorting the lights into two kinds. Those that do not move are the nakshatras; those that travel through them are the grahas. The same slokas say the zodiac holds 27 nakshatras counted from Ashvini, and that the very same circle is also divided into 12 rashis counted from Mesh. Santhanam's note beneath them lists the 27 names in order, Ashvini to Revati. The engine's list is those 27 in that order, in a slightly different spelling.

So a nakshatra is not a second zodiac. It is a second ruler laid along the one circle the Moon Sign calculator already measures. Twelve signs of 30 degrees and 27 nakshatras of 13 degrees 20 minutes both add up to 360 and both start from the same zero. The finest unit they share is the pada: 108 quarters of 3 degrees 20 minutes. BPHS works in exactly these units in the Kala Chakra example of Ch. 46, where a longitude is turned into kalas (minutes of arc) and divided by 800 for the nakshatra and by 200 for the pada. Eight hundred kalas is 13 degrees 20 minutes; two hundred is 3 degrees 20.

Every graha has a nakshatra, and the engine gives one to all nine and to the Lagna. But when BPHS says Janma Nakshatra it means the Moon's: Ch. 46 Sl. 16 works out the first dasha from how long the Moon has stayed in it. The Moon is also the only body that fits the scale. Measured with this engine over 2000-2025, the Moon completed 9,383 nakshatra stays, the shortest 20.82 hours and the longest 27.20, with a mean of 24.29 hours. That is one star a day, near enough, which is why a birth star says something a calendar date cannot.

One more star appears in the texts. BPHS Ch. 46 Sl. 21-22 describes Abhijit, assembled from the fourth pada of Uttarashadha and the first fifteenth of Shravana, for use in the Ashtottari dasha, and Saravali Ch. 35 Sl. 86 names a birth in Abhijit in one of its raja-yoga slokas. This engine holds the standard 27 only. A Moon in that stretch of sky is reported here as Uttara Ashadha or Shravana, never as Abhijit. The Alternate Dashas calculator does read Abhijit, from the Moon's longitude on those limits, for Ashtottari and Shastihayani.

The 27 spans, their lords and where the signs cut them

The table below is generated from the two constants the engine actually uses: a span of 360 divided by 27, and the nine-lord cycle with its years. Positions are given the way a chart prints them, as degrees inside a sign.

Nine of the 27 are cut by a sign boundary, and the cut follows the lord. The three Sun-ruled stars (Krittika, Uttara Phalguni, Uttara Ashadha) put one pada in the earlier sign and three in the later. The three Mars-ruled stars (Mrigashira, Chitra, Dhanishta) split two and two. The three Jupiter-ruled stars (Punarvasu, Vishakha, Purva Bhadrapada) put three padas in the earlier sign and one in the later. The other 18 lie inside a single sign. For those nine the pada on this page tells you the sign as well: Vishakha padas 1 to 3 are Libra, pada 4 is Scorpio.

There are three places where a nakshatra boundary and a sign boundary fall on the same degree: 0 Aries (Revati to Ashwini), 0 Leo (Ashlesha to Magha) and 0 Sagittarius (Jyeshtha to Mula). At each a Mercury-ruled star hands over to a Ketu-ruled one and the nine-lord cycle begins again. BPHS Ch. 92 Sl. 3 calls the last part of the first star and the opening part of the second, at each of these, Nakshatra Gandanta, and treats a birth there as inauspicious before prescribing rites. This engine has no gandanta flag and this app carries neither the verdict nor the rites. What survives is the geometry: at those three points a small error in the birth time changes the sign, the star and the dasha lord together.

From a birth date to a star: the exact steps

The method text above gives the division. This is the full chain the server runs, with the numbers it produces for the page's own example, 14 August 1994 with no time and no place.

1. 1.Fix the instant. With a birth time it is that local minute; without one it is 12:00 local. If the place resolves, its named time zone supplies the offset in force on that date. With no place the server assumes India time, UTC+5:30, and says so in the result (timezoneAssumed is true). The example becomes 06:30 UTC.
2. 2.Turn the instant into a Julian Day: 2449578.7708.
3. 3.Compute the Moon's tropical longitude from the lunar series coded in the app: 231.5354 degrees.
4. 4.Compute the Lahiri ayanamsa as a straight line: 23.85306 degrees at the start of 2000 plus 0.0139601 degrees per year. For this date that is 23.7779.
5. 5.Subtract. The sidereal Moon is 207.7575 degrees from 0 Aries.
6. 6.Cut. 207.7575 divided by 13.3333 is 15.5818. Fifteen whole stars lie behind the Moon, so it is in the sixteenth name, Vishakha. The fraction 0.5818, multiplied by four and rounded down, plus one, gives pada 3. Position 15 modulo nine is 6, and entry 6 of the lord cycle (counting from zero at Ketu) is Jupiter.
7. 7.Look up Vishakha's sentence in the 27-line table and attach it.

Every cut is a floor. There is no orb, no cusp and no blending of neighbours: a Moon at 213.3332 degrees is Vishakha and one at 213.3334 is Anuradha. The longitude is printed rounded to four decimals, but the name is taken from the unrounded value. The Ayanamsa calculator shows step 4 on its own for any date, and the methodology page sets out what these series can and cannot claim.

The same function describes every point in a chart, so every graha has a star. At the example's noon the Sun is in Ashlesha pada 4, Jupiter in Swati pada 3 and Rahu in Vishakha pada 2. This page reports only the Moon's. The Birth Chart calculator lists all of them, and the Sun Sign page shows the Sun's.

The lord: Parashara's count and the engine's count

BPHS Ch. 46 Sl. 12-14 states the Vimshottari rule. Starting from Krittika, the dasha lords run Sun, Moon, Mars, Rahu, Jupiter, Saturn, Mercury, Ketu, Venus. Count the nakshatras from Krittika to the Janma Nakshatra, divide by nine, and the remainder names the lord of the first dasha. Sl. 15 gives the years as 6, 10, 7, 18, 16, 19, 17, 7 and 20, a total of 120, which the text ties to the natural human life-span it assumes for the present age. Sl. 2-5 of the same chapter call Vimshottari the most appropriate dasha for general use.

The engine stores the same cycle beginning at Ashwini, as Ketu, Venus, Sun, Moon, Mars, Rahu, Jupiter, Saturn, Mercury, and takes the star's position modulo nine. The starting point differs; the assignment does not. Run for all 27 nakshatras, the two rules agree on every one. For the example: Vishakha is the 16th star, Krittika the 3rd, so the count from one to the other is 14. Fourteen divided by nine leaves 5, and the fifth lord in Parashara's list is Jupiter. The engine reaches Jupiter as entry 6 of its own list.

The lord matters because of Sl. 16: the first dasha is that lord's years, scaled by the part of the nakshatra the Moon still has to cross. The example Moon is 58.18 per cent of the way through Vishakha, so 41.82 per cent of Jupiter's 16 years remain. That is 6.69 years, ending on 23 April 2001, after which Saturn runs to April 2020 and Mercury to April 2037. This page does not print those dates. The Vimshottari Dasha calculator does, and What is a Mahadasha explains how to read them.

Later practice uses the same lord column for every graha, not only the Moon. Advanced Predictive Astrology lists the constellation a planet is placed in among the things that shape its dasha (p. 114), and its case studies speak of one planet sitting in another's constellation: in Chart 27 (p. 98) Rahu is read as placed in the Moon's constellation and Jupiter in Saturn's. This app uses that idea in one place: the Career and Money reading adds the lord of the star a career graha occupies as a second flavour on the fields it suggests. One finer step is offered too: the Nakshatra Sub-Lord calculator divides each star into nine unequal parts in the proportions of the lords' years. The example Moon's sub-lord is Venus, whose part runs from 206.5556 to 208.7778 degrees, 61.22 arc-minutes short of the Sun's.

The pada already names the navamsa

BPHS Ch. 46 Sl. 87-88 gives a rule for turning a pada into a navamsa. Take the number of nakshatras already passed, divide by three, multiply the remainder by four and add the current pada. The result is the navamsa sign counted from Mesh. It works because three nakshatras hold twelve padas, one for each sign, a point Sl. 56-58 make in passing. Tested against the engine's own navamsa rule (movable signs count from themselves, fixed signs from the ninth, dual signs from the fifth), the two give the same sign for all 108 padas.

Check two rows by the rule. Vishakha has 15 stars behind it; 15 divided by three leaves nothing, and 0 plus pada 3 is the third sign, Gemini. Anuradha has 16 behind it; the remainder is 1, and 4 plus pada 1 is the fifth sign, Leo. The table also shows how much one name hides. Vishakha covers four navamsas, two signs and twelve years of difference in when the first dasha ends. Only the temperament line is the same in the first four rows. The Navamsa (D9) calculator builds the whole ninth-part chart, and Navamsa: the second chart explains its use. BPHS also builds a dasha on the pada itself, the Kala Chakra of Ch. 46 Sl. 54 onward. The Alternate Dashas calculator computes it.

Reading every field of the result

• nakshatra, pada, lord: the headline. They are copies of the Moon block's nakshatra, pada and nakshatraLord, read at your birth minute or at noon.
• moon.longitude: sidereal degrees from 0 Aries, to four decimals. Divide it by 13.3333 and you can check the star yourself against the table above.
• moon.sign, signHi, degreeInSign: the sign in English and Sanskrit, and the degrees inside it to two decimals. For the nine stars that cross a sign boundary, this is what says which side you are on.
• moon.retrograde: always false. The engine states it as a known fact, since the Moon never appears to move backwards from Earth, rather than leaving the field empty.
• moon.combust: true when the Moon is within 12 degrees of the Sun, which means a birth close to the new moon. It changes nothing else on this page. The Moon Phase calculator gives the tithi for the same date.
• moon.house: present only when you give both a time and a place that resolves. It is a whole-sign house counted from the Lagna. At 06:42 in Ahmedabad the example Moon is in house 3; at 06:42 with no place there is no house, because there is no ascendant to count from.
• effect.trait: the temperament sentence. It depends on the nakshatra and nothing else.
• input: what the server understood - hasTime, hasPlace, hasAscendant, the time zone and its offset. Check timezoneAssumed first. True means India time was assumed because no place was given.
• dayRange: sent only when there is no birth time. It is explained next.

The 'Across your birth date' note

With no time, the server also casts the Moon at 00:00 and at 23:59 on the birth zone's clock and returns both ends with a changes flag. The flag compares sign, nakshatra and pada together. Even the slowest stay measured, 27.2 hours for a whole star, is under seven hours a pada, so the Moon always crosses at least one pada boundary in a day. In practice the flag is true on every date and the note always names two ends. What you need to read is which parts differ.

The third row is easy to misread. On 30 March 1990 the Moon covered 14.74 degrees, entering Krittika at 00:39 and Rohini at 22:19 India time. The note names Bharani and Rohini because those are the two ends, while the headline names Krittika because that is where the Moon was at noon. All three are possible birth stars for that date.

The temperament line and the table behind it

The line is one of 27 fixed sentences of the form 'Born under Vishakha, you tend to be ...'. The engine's provenance note says all 27 were read from Jyotisha-Siddhanta-Sara, Ch. IV and paraphrased, with the omissions the method text above describes. Here they are exactly as the engine holds them, so that when your date names two or three stars you can read each candidate.

Nothing else in the chart modulates the sentence. Two people born twenty hours apart in the same star, with different padas, signs and ascendants, get identical words. BPHS itself does not judge from a star alone: Ch. 3 Sl. 4-6 says good and bad effects are deduced from the Lagna and from the grahas joining and separating. Saravali reads the natal Moon sign by sign (Ch. 23), and nakshatras appear there only in passing, as when Ch. 35 Sl. 163 names the Moon in Pushya, Krittika or Ashwini among its raja-yoga conditions. So hold the line as one lens. The Kundali feature shows the same sentence beside the full chart, where the rest of the evidence sits.

The same source chapter also classifies each star by deity, symbol, Varna, body part and profession. None of that is used here. BPHS lists the presiding deities of the 27 nakshatras too, in Ch. 6 Sl. 24-26, where they serve as lords of the 27 parts of the Saptavimshamsa, a divisional chart Ch. 7 reads for strength and weakness. The Saptavimshamsa (D27) calculator builds that chart. This page prints no deity for your star.

Birth time, place and precision, measured

The introduction says a missing birth time costs the most on this page. These figures, taken from the engine itself, say how much.

• Across 27,759 calendar dates from 1950 to 2025, read in India time, the Moon's nakshatra at 00:00 differed from the one at 23:59 on 26,603 dates (95.84 per cent). Only 1,156 dates lie wholly inside one star.
• On 812 of those dates (2.93 per cent) the Moon touched three nakshatras.
• For a birth at an unknown time, sampled every ten minutes across all those dates, the noon reading names the right nakshatra 75.29 per cent of the time, and the right nakshatra and pada together 25.46 per cent.
• Over 2000-2025 a complete stay in one nakshatra lasted between 20.82 and 27.20 hours, 24.29 on average, which makes a pada about six hours.

A date-only answer is therefore a three-in-four estimate of the star and a one-in-four estimate of the pada. A time good to the hour usually settles the star; the pada needs better than that. Birth time unknown covers what can still be read without one.

The place matters even when the time is missing, because local noon is a different instant in each zone. For 14 August 1994 with no place, India time is assumed and the answer is Vishakha pada 3. Give New York and noon there is 21:30 in India: the Moon is at 213.3389 degrees, Anuradha pada 1, lord Saturn. Give London and it is Vishakha pada 4, in Scorpio. Give Tokyo and it is Vishakha pada 2. If you were born outside India, type the place even if you do not know the hour.

Precision has a floor as well. The engine's own header states the Moon's accuracy as about 0.1 degree. At the Moon's average pace that is roughly eleven minutes of clock time, so a birth within about a quarter of an hour of a boundary is not settled by this engine either way. A different ayanamsa moves all 27 boundaries together, which is the usual reason two apps disagree; Why apps disagree on your nakshatra works through a case on the line.

Where your birth star is used next

Dasha timelines

The star and its lord open the Vimshottari sequence, which the Timing feature carries down to sub-periods (see Antardasha and Pratyantar). The Alternate Dashas calculator applies seven more systems from BPHS Ch. 46, each counted from its own reference star. For a Vishakha Moon they open with the Sun (Shodshottari, 11 years), Mercury (Dwadashottari, 13), the Moon (Panchottari, 17), Venus (Shatabdik, 10), the Moon (Chaturashiti-sama, 12) the Sun (Dwisaptati-sama, 9) and Saturn (Shat-trimshat-sama, 6). Ashtottari and Shastihayani, which group the stars into uneven runs with Abhijit as a 28th, open on Mars (Ashtottari, 8) and Mercury (Shastihayani, 6), and Kala Chakra, which works on the pada, is computed there too.

Matching

In the Kundli Matching calculator four of the eight kootas are indexed by the Moon's nakshatra: Tara (3 points), Yoni (4), Gana (6) and Nadi (8), which is 21 of the 36. The other four use the Moon's sign. A Vishakha Moon falls in the Rakshasa gana group, the Antya nadi group and the Tiger yoni group. These are group labels used to score a pair. They are not descriptions of a person.

Two of these tables can be tied to the texts. Tara counts the stars from one Moon to the other in both directions and treats the third, fifth and seventh place in each cycle of nine as unfavourable; BPHS Ch. 44 Sl. 15-21 names exactly those three stars from the birth star as Vipat, Pratyak and Vadh. The three nadi groups of nine are the same three groups that Advanced Predictive Astrology prints on p. 225 as humour-producing asterisms, under Vata, Pitta and Kapha. That is the book's Ayurvedic framing and not medical advice. Beyond this the engine's own comment is frank: none of the app's source books holds the Ashtakoot tables or point scales, and its gana list, which used to place Ardra in the Rakshasa group, was questioned in an audit; since October 2026 Ardra is Manushya, where published web references named in the header agree.

The birth time reaches into the match through the star. Set the example Moon against a partner Moon in Swati. Read as Vishakha (noon) the four star kootas score Tara 3, Yoni 2, Gana 0 and Nadi 0: 5 of 21. Read as Anuradha (22:00) they score 1.5, 2, 6 and 8: 17.5 of 21. Yet the totals out of 36 are 20 and 21.5, because the Moon had also changed sign and the sign kootas swung the other way. A missing time can leave the total almost untouched while reversing every reason for it. The Compatibility feature reports which kootas are unsettled when a time is absent.

The day's star, which is not yours

The Muhurat calculator reads the nakshatra the Moon occupies at the moment being tested and checks it against a list kept for each activity; the marriage list, for example, includes Rohini, Hasta, Swati, Anuradha and Revati. That is the transiting Moon's star. Your birth star never changes. The Panchang page returns the tithi for a date and does not return a nakshatra.

The 27 stars one by one

Each nakshatra has its own page: Ashwini, Bharani, Krittika, Rohini, Mrigashira, Ardra, Punarvasu, Pushya, Ashlesha, Magha, Purva Phalguni, Uttara Phalguni, Hasta, Chitra, Swati, Vishakha, Anuradha, Jyeshtha, Mula, Purva Ashadha, Uttara Ashadha, Shravana, Dhanishta, Shatabhisha, Purva Bhadrapada, Uttara Bhadrapada and Revati. Moon sign and nakshatra explains how the star sits under the sign.

What this page does not compute

• Abhijit. The list has 27 names, so the 28th star of BPHS Ch. 46 is never returned.
• A gandanta flag. A Moon at the Revati-Ashwini, Ashlesha-Magha or Jyeshtha-Mula junction is reported like any other.
• Deity, symbol, gana, yoni or nadi for your star. The last three exist in the engine only inside matching, and are shown there as scores.
• The nakshatra of any graha other than the Moon, or of the Lagna.
• Any dasha. The lord is named; the dated timeline lives on the Vimshottari page.
• Rites. BPHS Ch. 89 and Ch. 92 prescribe observances for certain birth stars and junctions. This app prescribes none, here or anywhere.
• A forecast. The page returns a position, a lord and one paraphrased sentence. It makes no statement about events.

Questions

Is my birth star the Sun's nakshatra or the Moon's?

The Moon's. BPHS computes the Janma Nakshatra and the first dasha from the Moon's stay in its star (Ch. 46 Sl. 16). The Sun has a nakshatra too, shown on the Sun Sign page; on the example date it is Ashlesha pada 4 while the Moon is in Vishakha.

The note names two nakshatras for my date. Which one is mine?

Neither can be chosen from the date. The Moon was in the first at 00:00 and the second at 23:59, and on about 3 per cent of dates it passed through a third in between, which is then the headline. Only a birth time decides. If a relative remembers morning or night, enter an approximate time and see whether the answer holds when you move it an hour each way.

Does this page ever return Abhijit?

No. The engine's list holds the standard 27 names. A Moon in the stretch BPHS assigns to Abhijit, the last pada of Uttarashadha and the first fifteenth of Shravana, is reported as one of those two.

Is one nakshatra better than another?

This page does not rank them. The texts do favour particular stars for particular things, such as the per-activity lists the muhurat engine keeps or the Saravali sloka that names Pushya, Krittika and Ashwini, but always as one condition among several. BPHS Ch. 3 Sl. 4-6 deduces effects from the Lagna and the grahas together, not from a star by itself.

My star is in the Rakshasa gana. What does that say about me?

Nothing about you. Gana is a three-way grouping of the 27 stars used only to score a pair in matching: the same group scores 6 points, Deva against Rakshasa 0, and any other pairing 3. The engine's own notes say its gana list has no source among the app's books, so treat even the score with reserve.

Do I need to enter a birth place?

Without a time, the place sets which noon is read, and for the example date that alone moves the answer from Vishakha to Anuradha between India and New York. With a time, the place fixes the zone and also adds the Moon's house. If no place is given, India time is assumed and the result says so.

How close to a boundary is too close to trust?

The engine states its Moon is good to about 0.1 degree, which is roughly eleven minutes of the Moon's motion. A birth within about a quarter of an hour of a boundary could fall either side here, and a different ayanamsa could move it again. Compare moon.longitude with the table: if it is within a tenth of a degree of a multiple of 13.3333, read both stars.

Does my nakshatra change during my life?

No. It is fixed by where the Moon was at birth. What changes daily is the star the Moon is passing through now, which the Muhurat feature uses for choosing dates. The dasha that began from your star's lord moves on through the other eight lords in order.