Zodiac and houses
VedicsAstro uses the sidereal zodiac with the Lahiri (Chitrapaksha) ayanamsa — the standard of the Indian national calendar. It is the only ayanamsa offered.
Houses are whole-sign houses counted from the ascendant (Lagna). A Bhava Chalit view is available in the Charts section.
Rahu and Ketu are the mean lunar nodes. Dashas use the Vimshottari system (120 years); Yogini and Chara (Jaimini) dashas are also shown.
Planet positions
Positions are computed by our own astronomy engine (algorithms from Jean Meeus, Astronomical Algorithms) entirely in your browser.
We cross-check it against the Swiss Ephemeris. On our reference charts the largest difference for any planet is 0.05° (Sun 0.001°, Moon 0.005°). It is tuned for births between about 1940 and 2030; outside that range errors grow slowly (about 0.14° by 1700) but stay far smaller than a nakshatra pada (3.33°).
Birth time, place and time zone
Your birthplace is looked up with OpenStreetMap. Its time zone comes from real time-zone boundaries, and the UTC offset is the one in force on your birth date — for example India used +6:30 during 1942–45, and many countries use daylight saving.
If the birth time is approximate or unknown, we calculate the chart for every time in the possible range and only present results that are the same throughout. The ascendant changes roughly every two hours, so with an unknown time it — and everything based on houses — is not shown.
Panchang and sunrise
The tithi, nakshatra, yoga and karana for a day are the ones prevailing at true local sunrise, following Vedic convention.
Sunrise and sunset were checked against TimeAndDate.com for 28 cities on six continents and match to the minute. Near the poles, during polar day or night, sunrise is not defined and the Panchang there is nominal.
Calculation versus interpretation
Positions, signs, nakshatras, dasha dates and strengths are calculations. Descriptions of what they mean — personality, predictions, yogas, doshas and remedies — are traditional interpretations from classical Jyotish texts, not measurements, and are labelled that way.