E. L. Trouvelot, 1872
📅 The Panchang
What is Today's Reading (Rashifal)?
How AstroPal builds your personalised daily reading from the Panchang and your birth chart.
Most people think of a "rashifal" as a generic sun-sign horoscope. In AstroPal, your Today reading is something entirely different: a personalised, city-specific, birth-nakshatra-aware daily reading built from classical Vedic sources.
WHAT YOUR TODAY READING CONTAINS
- The date and four sky timings: sunrise, sunset, moonrise, and moonset for your chosen city
- A personal note (Tarabala): a one-line headline and short reading on how the day will treat you, tagged favourable, mixed, or careful
- Good time windows: auspicious muhurat periods to begin something important
- Windows best avoided: inauspicious periods to keep for routine work only
- Colors of the day: the wearable shades tied to the day's ruling planet
THE PANCHANG
- Vara: the weekday
- Tithi: the lunar day (based on the Moon's distance from the Sun)
- Nakshatra: which of the 27 lunar mansions the Moon occupies today
- Yoga: a combined quality of Sun + Moon longitude
- Karana: half a tithi
The muhurat windows (auspicious and inauspicious time slots) are derived from these five elements, particularly the tithi, nakshatra, and vara (weekday). Your Today reading pulls the relevant Panchang data computed for your city's coordinates and local time zone.
WHERE THE DATA COMES FROM
The Panchang is computed in advance for a curated set of cities using the North Indian convention. Your birth nakshatra is calculated once from your birth date, time, and place when you create your horoscope. The daily reading is then a quick, personalised lookup combining these two.
Your Today reading is not a horoscope by sun sign. It is a personalised reading built from the Panchang for your city combined with your birth nakshatra.
Panchang Foundations Quiz
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The Five Limbs of the Panchang