Panchang today — Chennai

Rahu Kaal is one of the eight equal parts of the day's daylight, chosen by the weekday. Almanacs advise against starting new work in it. It is computed here from this city's own sunrise and sunset, so it differs from city to city.

Abhijit is the muhurat around local midday, one of the fifteen parts of daylight. Traditional almanacs count it among the auspicious times to begin work; the time above is for this city.

A tithi is the time the Moon takes to move twelve degrees ahead of the Sun, so it does not follow the clock. The tithi current at sunrise is the day's tithi, and the end time above shows when the next one begins.

Panchang is the Hindu almanac, and its name means "five limbs": tithi, vara, nakshatra, yoga and karana. Tithi is the lunar day, vara is the weekday, nakshatra is the star group the Moon is in, yoga is a number derived from the Sun and Moon positions together, and karana is half a tithi. Together they describe the quality of a moment, and the calendar uses them to fix festivals and fasts. Mera Guru Ji's city pages show all five with their end times, along with sunrise and sunset.

Rahu Kaal is a stretch of roughly one and a half hours each day that tradition treats as unsuitable for starting new work. To find it, the daylight from sunrise to sunset is split into eight equal parts, and the weekday decides which part is Rahu Kaal: on Sunday it is the last part, on Monday the second. Because sunrise and sunset differ from city to city, so does Rahu Kaal. That is why each city page here works it out from that city's own sunrise and sunset.

No. Rahu Kaal is a traditional guideline about starting new ventures, not a warning that something bad will happen. Many people simply avoid beginning a new task, a purchase or a journey in that window if they can, and carry on with ordinary routine work and anything already in progress. Different families and regions follow it with different degrees of strictness. Treat it as a cultural habit you may follow or ignore, and there is nothing to fear about it either way.

Abhijit Muhurat is a short window around local midday, about 48 minutes, that the Vedic tradition regards as a favourable time to begin something. It is the eighth of the fifteen equal parts that the daytime is divided into, so it sits around the middle of the day between sunrise and sunset. Since that midpoint moves with the city and the season, the exact timing is different in Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata. The panchang page for your city shows it for today.

Sunrise and sunset happen at different clock times in different places, and the panchang is counted from the local sunrise. A tithi is defined by the Moon and Sun in the sky, so it ends at the same moment everywhere, but which weekday-tithi pair you see at sunrise can differ by city. Rahu Kaal, Abhijit Muhurat and choghadiya all depend on local sunrise and sunset too, so their times shift. Pick your own city rather than copying a time from another.

A tithi is a lunar day, which is the time the Moon takes to gain 12 degrees on the Sun. There are 30 tithis in a lunar month, 15 in the waxing (shukla) half and 15 in the waning (krishna) half. Because the Moon's speed keeps changing, a tithi is not a fixed 24 hours: it lasts roughly 19 to 26 hours. That is also why a tithi can begin or end at any hour and sometimes spans two sunrises.

Choghadiya is a traditional way of splitting the day, and separately the night, into eight parts of equal length, each with a name such as Amrit, Shubh, Labh, Char, Rog, Kaal or Udveg. Tradition treats the first group as favourable, Char as neutral and the rest as ones to avoid for beginning something. The length of each part depends on that day's sunrise and sunset, so it differs by city. The panchang pages here list the day's choghadiya for your city.

Today's tithi and nakshatra change through the day and by place, so the reliable way is to open the panchang page for your city on this site, which lists tithi, nakshatra, yoga and karana with their end times. In the Mera Guru Ji app, the Aaj screen shows a panchang strip for today, and the full Panchang screen lets you change the place. Both use calculated astronomy for the place you choose.