How we calculate your kundli

The sidereal zodiac, the one Vedic astrology has always used. It measures the signs against the stars. Western astrology measures them from the spring equinox instead, and the two have drifted apart over the centuries. The gap is called the ayanamsa.

We use the Lahiri ayanamsa, the value most Indian almanacs and most Vedic astrology software use. In 2026 it is about 24 degrees 14 minutes, and it grows by about 50 seconds of arc a year. Take it away from a Western position and you have the Vedic one. That is why most people's Sun moves one sign back here.

See your Sun, Moon and rising sign both ways, for your exact birth time

The new zodiac signs and the 13th sign: the same sky, counted three ways

From astronomy, not from tables typed in by hand. We use an open-source astronomy library (astronomy-engine) to work out where the Sun, the Moon and the five visible planets appeared from Earth at your minute of birth, then take away the ayanamsa.

We check it against the Swiss Ephemeris, the reference most astrology software is built on. On 300 moments spread between 1900 and 2100, every planet agrees with it to within a hundredth of a degree, the rising sign too, and retrograde motion agrees every time. That check runs again before any change to the site goes live.

Rahu and Ketu are the two points where the Moon's path crosses the Sun's. We use the Moon's mean node, the usual choice in Indian software, with Ketu exactly opposite Rahu. Some sites use the true node instead. The two can differ by up to about a degree and a half, which is enough to move Rahu into the next sign on some days.

Whole-sign houses. The sign rising in the east at your minute of birth is your first house, the whole of it. The next sign is your second house, and so on round the zodiac. This is the count the classical Indian texts use, and the one most Vedic astrologers still use.

The rising sign, or lagna, comes from your exact latitude and longitude and the minute of birth. On average it moves about a quarter of a degree a minute and changes sign about every two hours. That is why the houses need a real birth time, and why we leave them out when you don't have one.

We don't use Placidus, Koch or the other quadrant systems Western apps use. They divide the sky by angle, not by sign, so a planet near the edge of a sign can land in a different house.

Your Vedic rising sign, and why a Western app shows a different one

Which house each of your planets is in

You give the clock time on your birth record, in the town you were born in. We find that town's time zone and its full history: daylight saving where it applied, and older rules too, such as India's war time of 1942 to 1945, when clocks ran an hour ahead. From that we get the universal time of your birth, and add the small correction astronomers call Delta T so that old dates are not a few minutes out.

A birth time that is an hour out can change your rising sign and, with it, every house. It also moves your dasha dates: one minute of birth time moves them by about a day and a half. So when your time is rough, we say so on the page, and we never fill in a guess.

Your dasha dates, and how a rough birth time shifts them

From GeoNames, the open list of the world's places (geonames.org, CC BY 4.0). It holds every town of a thousand people or more, and for India and its neighbours the villages and city neighbourhoods as well. You start typing, and we show the matches with their state and country, so Springfield, Illinois is not mixed up with Springfield, Missouri.

We use the centre of the town. Being a few kilometres off moves the rising sign by less than a tenth of a degree and the planets by nothing you would notice. If your village is not in the list, choose the nearest town, or give the latitude and longitude.

Your birth details go into the sum and come back to you with the answer. We don't keep them. If you tick the box, your own device remembers them, and only your device.

Your Vedic birth chart, with every planet's sign, house and nakshatra

What we keep, and what we never see

The zodiac is also divided into 27 nakshatras, each 13 degrees 20 minutes wide, and each of those into four padas of 3 degrees 20 minutes. We read them straight off each planet's sidereal position. The Moon's nakshatra is your birth star, and it is where your dasha count begins.

Your Moon sign, nakshatra and pada

The Vimshottari dasha runs for 120 years in a fixed order: Ketu 7, Venus 20, Sun 6, Moon 10, Mars 7, Rahu 18, Jupiter 16, Saturn 19, Mercury 17. Your first period is the one that rules your Moon's nakshatra, and you get the part of it still ahead of the Moon at birth. If the Moon was a quarter of the way through the nakshatra, three quarters of that period remain.

Each antardasha inside a mahadasha is its share: the two lords' years multiplied, then divided by 120. We count a year as 365 and a quarter days.

The nine mahadashas, in order, and what each tends to bring

By the classical rules. For the navamsa (D9), each sign is cut into nine parts of 3 degrees 20 minutes. The count starts from the sign itself for a movable sign, from the ninth sign for a fixed sign, and from the fifth for a dual sign. For the dashamsha (D10), each sign is cut into ten parts of 3 degrees, counted from the sign itself for an odd sign and from the ninth for an even one. The rising sign of each chart is placed the same way, so its houses can be counted.

Your navamsa (D9) chart

Your dashamsha (D10) chart, read for career

Each planet is marked exalted, debilitated, in its own sign, or in a friendly, neutral or unfriendly sign, by the classical lists of exaltation signs and the natural friendships between the planets. A planet is marked retrograde when it appears to move backwards against the stars. We show these as they are. We don't turn them into a score.

Nearly always one of five things. A different ayanamsa: Raman's is about a degree and a half less than Lahiri's, and KP's a few minutes of arc less, so a planet near the end of a sign can change sign. A different house system. A different time zone or daylight saving rule for the birth date, which shifts the rising sign. The true node instead of the mean node for Rahu and Ketu. Or a birth time typed as 12-hour when it was 24-hour.

If you find a difference that none of these explain, write to us with the date, time and place, and we will check it.

Write to us

Three ways. The planets, the rising sign and the nodes are tested against the Swiss Ephemeris on 300 moments between 1900 and 2100, and that test has to pass before anything goes live. Every change to the reading is run on 240 different birth charts first, and every line checked. And every calculator and article is reviewed by Dhaval Gada, who is named on the page.

What we don't do is predict. The chart shows where the planets were. What that tends to mean, we say as a tendency to check against your own life, with the classical rule behind it and our own reading marked as ours.

How a reading is made, from the chart to the four chapters