How to find an auspicious time today, layer by layer

An auspicious time today, as the panchang, the traditional Hindu almanac, reckons it, is a stretch of the day that its counts of the hours favour for starting something new. The almanac lays several of those counts over one day, each keeping some parts and setting others aside, and what comes through all of them is what tradition prefers. Finding one takes your local sunrise and sunset, the weekday and some simple division.

This note works through the layers in turn, carrying one example day through every step: the sunrise all the counts start from, the eight choghadiya parts, the three daytime periods tradition sets aside, the planetary hours and two named muhurtas (traditional spans of about forty-eight minutes), and the personal layers that need a birth chart. Throughout, an auspicious time is a preference tradition offers for a beginning, not a forecast of how it will go.

Start from your own sunrise

Every count of the hours is measured from the local sunrise rather than from midnight, so the first step is to find when the sun rises and sets where you are today, and when it rises again tomorrow. A time printed for another city will not fit yours: two cities in one time zone see sunrise at different clock times, and where clocks change for daylight saving, every figure moves with them.

The weekday comes from the same reckoning. In the panchang it is the vara, named for one of the seven grahas, the moving bodies of traditional astronomy, and it changes at sunrise rather than at midnight, so an hour before dawn still belongs to yesterday's vara. The Vedic day: why it starts at sunrise sets out that reckoning.

From those times, work out two lengths: the daylight, from sunrise to sunset, and the night, from sunset to the next sunrise. Most of the layers below cut one or the other into equal parts, so the parts stretch and shrink with the season. The example used throughout, in round illustrative figures rather than any real city, is a Thursday with sunrise at 6:00am, sunset at 6:00pm and the next sunrise at 6:00am, so the daylight and the night each run 720 minutes.

Keep the choghadiya parts tradition favours

The choghadiya divides the daylight into eight equal parts and the night into eight more, and gives each part one of seven names. Tradition favours four of them: Amrit (nectar), held in the highest regard; Shubh (good), for beginnings; Labh (gain), for work and steady progress; and Char (moving), above all for travel. It sets aside the other three, Udveg (restlessness), Kaal (time) and Rog (illness), when choosing a time to begin something.

The weekday decides where the names start. The daytime loop always runs Udveg, Char, Labh, Amrit, Kaal, Shubh, Rog, and the first part of the day takes the name that belongs to the weekday's graha. Thursday is Jupiter's day and Shubh belongs to Jupiter, so Thursday's daylight opens with Shubh and walks the loop from there. What is choghadiya? gives every weekday's starting point and the night's different order.

On the example Thursday each part lasts 90 minutes, an eighth of 720, and the daytime parts run Shubh, Rog, Udveg, Char, Labh, Amrit, Kaal and Shubh: five favoured names in eight parts. The night is read the same way, and this one opens with Amrit, then Char. The next layer takes two of those five daytime parts back.

Set aside Rahu Kaal, Yamaganda and Gulika

Rahu Kaal, Yamaganda and Gulika are three classical daytime periods. Each fills one of the same eight equal parts of the daylight, numbered 1 to 8 from sunrise, with the weekday deciding which: on a Thursday, Rahu Kaal is part 6, Yamaganda part 1 and Gulika part 3. The guide to Rahu Kaal, Yamaganda and Gulika gives the parts for every weekday. Since the periods and the choghadiya share one set of parts, the two can be laid over each other.

Two favoured names fall inside a period here: the opening Shubh in Yamaganda, and the Amrit in Rahu Kaal. Practice differs on such an overlap, and some readers let the favoured name stand. The cautious reading, usual wherever Rahu Kaal is closely kept, lets the period win and passes the part over for a new start, and that is the reading followed here. Customs around Gulika vary more than around the other two, so where your family keeps its own practice, follow it.

That leaves three stretches on the example Thursday: Char from 10:30am to noon, Labh from noon to 1:30pm, and Shubh from 4:30pm to sunset. In the reckoning used here the three periods belong to the daylight only, though some traditions count night versions as well.

Narrow it with the hora, the muhurtas and the chart

The hora is the planetary hour: twelve equal parts of the daylight and twelve of the night, each ruled by a graha in a fixed order, Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, with the first hora after sunrise belonging to the weekday's own lord. For beginnings, tradition generally looks to the horas of the gentler grahas, Jupiter, Venus, Mercury and the Moon. The note on the hora explains the order.

On the example Thursday each hora lasts 60 minutes, starting with Jupiter at sunrise. That puts Mercury and then the Moon across the Char stretch, changing at 11:00am; Saturn and then Jupiter across Labh, changing at 1:00pm; and Venus and then Mercury across the closing Shubh, changing at 5:00pm.

The abhijit muhurta is the eighth of fifteen equal parts of the daylight, the span across local solar noon, which tradition counts among the steadier parts of the day; many panchangs pass over it on Wednesdays. On the example day it runs from 11:36am to 12:24pm, across the join of Char and Labh, as the note on abhijit muhurta works out. The Brahma muhurta, from ninety-six to forty-eight minutes before the next sunrise, is kept by tradition for prayer, study and unhurried work.

Read together, the whole Char stretch, the half hour from 1:00pm and the Shubh before sunset each pair a favoured name with a gentler graha's hora, and from 11:36am to noon abhijit joins them: the one stretch of the example day where all three meet. The hour after noon falls under Saturn's hora, which tradition keeps for other kinds of work. Purpose matters too: Char is favoured above all for setting out, and Shubh for ceremonies and first days.

The last layer is personal. Tarabala counts from the birth nakshatra, one of the 27 star divisions along the Moon's path, to the day's nakshatra and reduces the count to one of nine taras, of which tradition favours the second, fourth, sixth, eighth and ninth. Chandrabala counts the day's Moon sign from the natal Moon sign, favouring the first, third, sixth, seventh, tenth and eleventh houses. This is where working by hand slows down: it needs your birth chart, and the day's nakshatra and Moon sign, which a panchang lists and which can change partway through the day.

How Sumuhurta works through the layers

Sumuhurta, the iPhone app this site is about, does this layering on the phone, chart included. It calculates sunrise, sunset and the next sunrise for your place, checks the whole cycle minute by minute, and lets a minute through only if it sits wholly inside an Amrit, Shubh, Labh or Char part and wholly outside Rahu Kaal, Yamaganda and Gulika, the same two filters as the worked example. Inside what is left, it weighs the hora, the abhijit muhurta and the Brahma muhurta against the birth chart entered on your phone, including the Moon's position relative to your birth Moon. Its rule reads:

Every personal window Sumuhurta surfaces is calculated to avoid Rahu Kaal, Yamaganda, Gulika, and the Kaal, Rog and Udveg choghadiya periods.

What comes out is not a table but one to three personal windows in each sunrise-to-sunrise cycle, day or night, running roughly twenty to a hundred and fifty minutes and never crossing sunrise or sunset. Each carries a plain-English quality, Clear run, Sharp or Steady, and a quiet attribution naming the hora and the choghadiya at its middle, in the form Mercury hora · Labh. The windows also appear in Home Screen and Lock Screen widgets, and an optional notification, sent only between 7am and 10pm, says when one opens, as the widgets page shows.

That rule is narrow on purpose. The app does not perform a complete electional-muhurta assessment, the fuller traditional work of choosing a moment for one occasion, which weighs many more factors. It does not replace a full panchang: there are no choghadiya, hora or Rahu Kaal tables on any screen, and no tithi (lunar day) or nakshatra tables. It shows no score or rating, never marks any part of the day as a bad time, and does not predict outcomes. How it reads the day covers the rest of the calculation.

Common questions

What is the auspicious time today where I live?

It depends on your own sunrise and sunset, so no single answer fits everyone. Divide today's daylight into eight parts, keep those carrying Amrit, Shubh, Labh or Char, set aside today's Rahu Kaal, Yamaganda and Gulika, and narrow what is left by hora and abhijit. A full panchang for your city does this arithmetic for you.

What is the most auspicious time of the day?

No one hour holds that place every day. Tradition generally holds Amrit in the highest regard among the choghadiya, followed by Shubh, and counts abhijit around local noon among the steadier spans; in the reading followed here, either still has to lie clear of Rahu Kaal, Yamaganda and Gulika.

Is an auspicious time the same as a muhurat?

Not quite. A muhurat usually means a time chosen for one occasion, such as a wedding, by weighing more layers than this note covers. What is a muhurat? explains the difference.

Does the app list today's auspicious times?

No. It shows one to three personal windows in each cycle, with no choghadiya, hora or Rahu Kaal tables. A full panchang for your city lists those.