The short answer
You read a panchang by checking its five limbs in order: tithi (the lunar day), nakshatra (the Moon's lunar mansion), yoga (a Sun–Moon combination), karana (half a tithi), and vara (the weekday). Each entry names the element ruling at your local sunrise and the time it ends, so you know what governs the rest of the day.
The word itself says what it is: pancha (five) plus anga (limbs). A panchang is not a forecast — it is an astronomical table. Every value in it follows from just two moving points, the Sun and the Moon, measured along the ecliptic for a specific place and date.
The five limbs, one by one
Each limb is a different way of slicing the Sun–Moon relationship. Here is what each one measures astronomically:
- Tithi — the lunar day. One tithi is each 12° of angular separation between the Moon and the Sun, giving 30 tithis per lunar month: 15 in the waxing (shukla) half from new moon to full, and 15 in the waning (krishna) half back to new.
- Nakshatra — the Moon's position among the 27 lunar mansions, each spanning 13°20′ of the sidereal zodiac. The Moon crosses roughly one nakshatra per day.
- Yoga — the sum of the Sun's and Moon's longitudes, divided into 27 equal arcs of 13°20′. The 27 yogas run from Vishkambha to Vaidhriti, each with a traditional quality.
- Karana — half a tithi, i.e. each 6° of Moon–Sun separation, giving 60 karana slots per lunar month filled by 11 named karanas (7 repeating, 4 fixed).
- Vara — the weekday, which in the Hindu reckoning runs from one sunrise to the next, each day ruled by a planet: Sun on Sunday through Saturn on Saturday.
How a daily panchang is computed for your city
The calculation is deterministic astronomy. First, the software computes the exact longitudes of the Sun and the Moon from an ephemeris — MyAstro360 uses the Swiss Ephemeris, the same high-precision data set behind professional astrology software. For the nakshatra and yoga, which live on the sidereal zodiac, the Lahiri (Chitrapaksha) ayanamsa is subtracted to convert tropical positions to sidereal ones. Tithi and karana need no ayanamsa at all, because they are differences between the two bodies — the offset cancels out.
Second, the software computes local sunrise for your coordinates. This is why a panchang is always city-specific: sunrise in Kolkata and sunrise in London happen at different moments, so the tithi or nakshatra prevailing at sunrise — the one that traditionally rules the day — can differ between cities on the same date. The published end times are simply the instants the Moon–Sun geometry crosses the next 12°, 13°20′, or 6° boundary, converted to your local clock.
Same inputs, same output: given the same date, time zone, and coordinates, the panchang is identical every time. Where two panchangs disagree, the cause is almost always a different ayanamsa or a different city, not a different opinion.
Reading it in practice
Start at the top: date, city, and sunrise time — everything else hangs off these. Then read the five limbs, noting when each ends. A tithi listed as ending at 14:32 means the next tithi governs from that moment, so an event at 16:00 falls under the next lunar day, not the one printed first.
Most daily panchangs also list derived windows built from the same data: rahu kaal and other inauspicious spans carved out of the sunrise-to-sunset day, and favourable moments like abhijit muhurta around local noon. These are conveniences, not extra astronomy — they all follow from sunrise, sunset, and the weekday.
What a panchang can and cannot tell you
The astronomy in a panchang is fact: the Moon really is a measurable number of degrees ahead of the Sun at any instant. What each limb means — that a particular tithi favours beginnings, or a particular yoga is delicate — is classical interpretation, a tradition refined over centuries but not a law of nature. It is a lens for choosing your moment thoughtfully, not a verdict on your day.
Use it that way: as a rhythm to plan with, held lightly. No combination of limbs dooms a date, and nothing in a panchang overrides your own judgment about what a day requires.