Nakshatra Calculator
Your birth star and its pada, the exact minute the Moon entered it and the minute it leaves, and where all nine grahas sit in the twenty-seven.
Birth details
Date and time are enough. The place is optional and only adds the rising sign.
The Moon’s position depends on when you were born, not where you were standing, so your nakshatra does not need this. It sets your timezone and adds the rising sign.
The twenty-seven
Each sector is 13°20′ of the zodiac and links to its own guide. The colours are the ruling grahas, so the nine-fold Vimshottari cycle is visible going round three times.
Hover or tap a sector to see its degrees and its ruling graha. Each one links to its own guide.
What is a Nakshatra?
A nakshatra is one of twenty-seven equal divisions of the sidereal zodiac, each spanning 13°20'. Where the twelve rashis carve the circle into signs, the nakshatras carve it into lunar mansions, and it is the Moon that decides which one is yours. The Moon crosses a full nakshatra in roughly a day, so the star you were born under is a far finer statement about the moment than a sun sign.
Everything Vedic astrology does with timing runs through the nakshatras. The Vimshottari dasha, which is the main predictive system in use, begins from the fraction of the birth nakshatra the Moon had still to travel. Marriage compatibility scores four of its eight kootas from the birth star. Muhurta selection picks a day by which star the Moon occupies. None of that works from a rashi alone.
This calculator returns the star, the pada, the ruling graha and the unexpired Vimshottari balance, and it does two things the usual six-field lookup does not: it gives the exact instants the Moon entered and left your nakshatra, found by bisection on the Moon's longitude, and it reports the nakshatra of all nine grahas and the ascendant rather than the Moon alone.
What is a nakshatra in Vedic astrology?
A nakshatra is one of the twenty-seven lunar mansions of the sidereal zodiac, each 13°20' of arc. Your birth nakshatra, or janma nakshatra, is the one the Moon occupied at the moment you were born, and it is the single most-used point in Vedic astrology after the ascendant.
Each star carries a ruling graha, a presiding deity, a symbol, a gana, a yoni and a nadi. Those last three feed directly into Ashtakoota marriage matching, which is why a nakshatra is a social fact and not only an astronomical one.
How is a pada calculated, and why does it matter?
Each nakshatra divides into four padas of 3°20'. The pada is found from the Moon's position within the nakshatra, not within the sign — a distinction that is easy to get wrong and produces the wrong pada for any Moon past 13°20' of a sign.
A pada is the same 3°20' division as a navamsa, so the two are the same boundaries counted differently: 108 padas, 108 navamsas. Reading the pada therefore tells you the D9 sign of the placement without casting a second chart, which is why two people born under the same star can read quite differently.
What is Tara Bala?
Tara Bala is a nine-fold ladder counted from the birth star: Janma, Sampat, Vipat, Kshema, Pratyari, Sadhaka, Vadha, Mitra and Parama Mitra. Counting from your nakshatra to the star the Moon occupies today gives a number from one to twenty-seven, and its position modulo nine names the tara.
Because there are twenty-seven stars and nine taras, each rung is reached exactly three times per circuit. Vipat, Pratyari and Vadha are the difficult ones, and Janma is read as mixed rather than bad — it is your own star, strong but exposed. The ladder is fixed by your birth; what moves is which graha sits on which rung, which is why it says something different every day.
Why do the exact entry and exit times matter?
The Moon crosses a nakshatra in somewhere between about twenty-one and twenty-seven hours, depending on where it is in its orbit. A birth a few hours either side of a boundary belongs to a different star, and every downstream reading changes with it.
The remaining fraction of the nakshatra at birth is not a curiosity either: it is exactly what the Vimshottari dasha starts from. If the Moon had travelled two thirds of Rohini, one third of the Moon's ten-year mahadasha remained, and every dasha date for the rest of the life is measured from there.
How the Nakshatra Calculator Works
From a birth moment to a star, a pada and a window
Enter Date and Time
These two alone fix the Moon. The place is optional.
The Moon is Located
Its sidereal longitude is computed from the Swiss Ephemeris.
Star and Pada Are Read
One division of 3°20' gives both, so they cannot disagree.
The Boundaries Are Found
Bisection returns the minute the Moon entered and the minute it leaves.
What This Calculator Returns
More than the star name
Exact Entry and Exit Instants
The minute the Moon entered your nakshatra and the minute it left, to the second.
All Nine Grahas
Every planet's nakshatra, pada, star lord and navamsa, not the Moon on its own.
Tara Bala Against Live Transits
The nine-rung ladder from your birth star, with each transiting graha in its rung.
Vimshottari Balance at Birth
The unexpired portion of the first mahadasha, which is what the whole dasha ladder starts from.
Frequently Asked Questions
Common questions about nakshatras and padas
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Pawan Acharya · Acharya (Vedic Astrology)
Vedic Astrologer & Nadi Shastra Researcher
Pawan Acharya (Acharya Pawan Chandra) is a Vedic astrologer and Nadi Shastra researcher with over 35 years of experience. He is the author of several classical Jyotish works — including Vivaha Sutram, Samay Sutram, Phalit Sutram and Jyotish Ke Anubhoot Rahasya — and developed an original method for calculating the probable date of marriage from a person's birth details. His research has contributed to leading astrology software and journals.