How to Read a Hora Table: Day, Night and Planetary Order

How does a Hora table work?

Open the Hora calculator for an actual date and location. The complete Monday schedule below is an invented teaching example. Its times are chosen to make the arithmetic easy; they are not today's timings for any city.

Read the three solar boundaries first

You need today's sunrise, today's sunset and tomorrow's sunrise, all for the same location and time zone. Daytime duration uses the first two; night duration uses the second and third. Copying today's sunrise into tomorrow's field is only an approximation unless the two calculated times happen to agree.

A table headed “Monday” commonly covers Monday sunrise through Tuesday sunrise. The civil calendar still changes at midnight. That means a row at 02:10 on Tuesday can belong to Monday's night-Hora sequence. Check the date convention instead of changing the lord because the clock has passed midnight.

The sunrise guide explains the daily reference point. For dates attached to late-night rows, read Panchang times after midnight. These details matter when saving a row to a calendar or sharing it with somebody in another city.

Calculate the length of day and night Horas

Suppose an invented Monday has sunrise at 06:30, sunset at 17:30, and the next sunrise at 06:30 on Tuesday. Assume the clock offset stays unchanged across this example.

• Daylight: 11 hours = 660 minutes. One day Hora is 660 ÷ 12 = 55 minutes.
• Night: 13 hours = 780 minutes. One night Hora is 780 ÷ 12 = 65 minutes.

There are twelve of each, so the full example totals 24 periods and 24 clock hours. In an actual calculation, the interval between successive sunrises need not be exactly 24 hours. Use the computed boundaries rather than assuming a fixed daily total.

When the division produces seconds or fractions, keep that precision until displaying the rows. Rounding the duration first and repeatedly adding it can push the final row away from sunset or sunrise. A reliable table makes adjoining boundaries meet and ends the twelfth period at its solar boundary.

Follow the sequence without restarting at sunset

The repeating order is Sun → Venus → Mercury → Moon → Saturn → Jupiter → Mars → Sun. Enter that cycle at the weekday's first lord: Sun on Sunday, Moon on Monday, Mars on Tuesday, Mercury on Wednesday, Jupiter on Thursday, Venus on Friday and Saturn on Saturday.

For Monday, the first seven lords are therefore Moon, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus and Mercury. The eighth repeats Moon. Sunset changes the duration of a Hora in our example; it does not restart the planet sequence. Day Hora 12 belongs to the Sun, so night Hora 13 belongs to Venus.

The names are traditional labels for time periods. A Venus Hora does not mean Venus is rising, overhead or in a particular zodiac sign. Those are separate astronomical questions that this division of the day does not answer.

The complete daytime example

A proposed start at 10:30 lies inside the Sun row, 10:10–11:05. At exactly 11:05, the next row begins and the label becomes Venus. Treat the start as included and the end as belonging to the following interval. A rounded display is insufficient to settle an event within a few seconds of a boundary.

The complete night example, including the date change

Here “+1 day” means Tuesday. Midnight falls at the boundary between Mars and Sun in this particular invented schedule. That coincidence is not a rule for other dates. At 06:30 on Tuesday, the next daytime sequence begins with Mars, Tuesday's lord.

A night table may number its rows 1–12 instead of 13–24. Read its heading before concluding that a row is missing. This article numbers all periods continuously so that the transition from day to night is easy to audit.

Why Hora and Choghadiya rows do not line up

In the conventions used by these tools, Hora divides each day or night into twelve parts; Choghadiya divides each into eight. With eleven hours of daylight in our example, one daytime Choghadiya lasts 82 minutes 30 seconds, while one daytime Hora lasts 55 minutes. Different boundaries are expected.

The Choghadiya reading guide shows that system's names and overlaps. A favorable label from one table does not automatically override another factor in a tradition's muhurta selection. Keep the chosen activity, the applicable Panchang rules and practical arrangements in view.

A useful check before sharing a Hora

1. Save the location and time zone with the date.
2. Confirm all three solar boundaries, including the following sunrise.
3. Identify whether the row belongs to daytime or the previous night's sequence.
4. Include the start and end, with the civil date on each side of midnight.
5. Describe the label as a traditional timing classification, not a measured chance of success.

For example, “Monday example, Sun Hora, 10:10–11:05” is readable only because the example already supplies its solar times. A real shared appointment also needs its city and time zone. A screenshot cropped down to “Sun: 10:10” leaves too much information behind.

Hora can help a reader follow a customary timing practice. It does not establish that an outcome will occur, and a planetary label alone is not a complete personal muhurta assessment. The most useful first skill is reading the interval accurately.

Frequently asked questions