Today's Panchang explained
The five limbs of today's almanac, with the real calculation shown.
Tithi तिथि
- Today in Kathmandu
- Dashami (krishna) → Ekadashi (krishna)
- How many
- 30 per lunar month
- Formula
- (Moon longitude − Sun longitude) ÷ 12°
- Dashami: 11-03 12:09 – 11:18
- Ekadashi: 11:18 – 11-05 10:50
Every 12° the Moon gains on the Sun marks one tithi. Thirty tithis make a lunar month: fifteen while the Moon grows (Shukla paksha, the bright half), fifteen while it fades (Krishna paksha, the dark half). The 15th of the bright half is Purnima (full moon); the last of the dark half is Amavasya or Aunsi (new moon).
Because the Moon's speed varies, a tithi is not a fixed 24 hours: it lasts between roughly 19 and 26 hours. That is why a tithi can begin and end at any time of day and why two festivals can seem to 'shift' from year to year on the Gregorian calendar.
Each tithi has a presiding deity and a traditional character: Ekadashi (11th) is a fasting day for Vishnu devotees, Chaturthi for Ganesha, Ashtami for Durga, Amavasya is the day for rites for ancestors and Purnima is a full-moon observance.
The Moon-Sun angle is precisely the lunar phase. The tithi is a clean way to count it; its religious significance is cultural.
How it is worked out
Astavya computes the Moon's and Sun's sidereal longitudes, subtracts, divides by 12° and rounds down. The start and end instants are found by solving for the moment that elongation crosses a multiple of 12°.
Culture and history
Most Nepali festivals (Dashain, Tihar, Janai Purnima) are defined by a tithi in a lunar month, not by a fixed date, which is why they move on the Gregorian calendar.
Sources
- Vedanga Jyotisha, attributed to Lagadha. The earliest surviving text of Indian astronomy-for-ritual-timing (calendar, tithis, nakshatras). Its date is debated by scholars.
- Surya Siddhanta, traditional astronomical treatise, revised across centuries. A classical Sanskrit astronomy text used for computing planetary positions and calendars.
- Calendrical Calculations, Nachum Dershowitz and Edward M. Reingold. Computes Hindu lunisolar and solar calendars alongside many others, with explicit algorithms.
These are the works the tradition and the astronomy draw on. Astavya paraphrases them; verse-level quotations are not reproduced, and editorial review by a qualified Jyotisha scholar is pending.
The calculation, live
Using the Sun's and Moon's real positions at 2026-11-04 15:03 UTC. The Panchang for a day uses sunrise, so the value here may differ slightly.
- The Sun is at 197.97° and the Moon at 142.84° on the sidereal zodiac (measured from the start of Aries).
- Moon minus Sun = 304.86°.
- Divide by 12° and round up: tithi number 26 is Ekadashi of the Krishna paksha.
Illustrative of the method. Astavya's Panchang pages show the exact start and end times.
The Panchang uses the sidereal zodiac, measured against the stars. The 'ayanamsa' is the small angle between that and the tropical (seasonal) zodiac. Because Earth's axis wobbles very slowly (precession, about 50 arc-seconds a year), the ayanamsa grows and is about 24.2° in 2026 on the Lahiri standard Astavya uses.