Choosing a good moment — muhurta — is one of the most common questions an astrologer is asked. The Day Timings / Horā dialog puts the classical day divisions in one view, so you can answer it at a glance: when to avoid starting something, when the day is most supportive, and which planet rules each hour.
Day Timings / Horā — what's running now is highlighted in every section.
Opening the dialog
Choose Vedic → Day Timings / Horā. Like the Panchang, it needs no profile and is calculated for your current location. It opens on today — or, from the Transit tab, on the time slider's moment, which also decides what counts as "now" for the highlights. Other ways in:
- The Day Timings / Horā → link and the Horā / Choghadiya tiles on the Today's Pañcāṅga card.
- The "Open in new window" icon on the dashboard's Horā strip (the Transit tab of the Vedic dashboard).
The header subtitle gives the date, place and sunrise–sunset span. On the right is an Equal hours switch, explained below.
The horā bar
Across the top runs the whole Vedic day, sunrise to next sunrise, as 24 slices — one per planetary hour, each as wide as the hour is long and marked with its ruling planet's glyph in its Vedic colour. The current horā is hatched with accent edges. Hover any slice for its planet and times, e.g. Sun (Sūrya) · 06:12 AM – 07:03 AM.
Inauspicious windows
Daytime (sunrise to sunset) is divided into eight equal parts, and the weekday decides which part belongs to each period:
| Weekday | Rāhu Kāla | Yamaganda | Gulika |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sunday | 8th | 5th | 7th |
| Monday | 2nd | 4th | 6th |
| Tuesday | 7th | 3rd | 5th |
| Wednesday | 5th | 2nd | 4th |
| Thursday | 6th | 1st | 3rd |
| Friday | 4th | 7th | 2nd |
| Saturday | 3rd | 6th | 1st |
Each row shows a coloured dot — red for Rāhu Kāla, amber for Yamaganda, grey-violet for Gulika — and the time range. The row you're in right now is lightened and marked • active.
Auspicious windows
- Brahma Muhurta — before sunrise — meditation, study. The night from the previous sunset to sunrise is divided into 15 muhurtas; Brahma Muhurta is the 14th, roughly 96 to 48 minutes before sunrise on a twelve-hour night.
- Abhijit Muhurta — midday — good for starting work. The 8th of the 15 daytime muhurtas, centred on local noon. Tradition doesn't use Abhijit on Wednesdays, so on a Wednesday its dot turns grey and the note reads not used on Wednesday.
Choghadiya
Choghadiya divides the day and the night into eight equal parts each, every part carrying one of seven qualities. AstroWatch lists them in two columns, Day and Night, with a coloured dot and the time range. The current one has an accent background.
| Colour | Choghadiya | Meaning (tooltip) |
|---|---|---|
| Green | Labh, Amrit, Shubh | Good — auspicious |
| Amber | Char | Neutral — fine for travel |
| Red | Udveg, Kaal, Rog | Avoid for new work |
The day sequence starts from the weekday's first Choghadiya (Sunday Udveg, Monday Amrit, Tuesday Rog, Wednesday Labh, Thursday Shubh, Friday Char, Saturday Kaal) and runs through the cycle Udveg → Char → Labh → Amrit → Kaal → Shubh → Rog; the night follows its own classical progression.
Horā — the planetary hours
The last section is a 24-row table: number, planet glyph, planet name (Sun (Sūrya), Moon (Chandra), Mars (Maṅgala) …), time range and Day / Night. The running horā is highlighted.
The first horā after sunrise belongs to the weekday's lord — the Sun on Sunday, the Moon on Monday and so on — and the hours then follow the Chaldean order: Saturn → Jupiter → Mars → Sun → Venus → Mercury → Moon. Horā is a quick way to pick the hour of a planet that suits the task: Jupiter for teaching or advice, Venus for art and relationships, Mercury for writing and trade.
Equal or unequal hours
By default AstroWatch uses classical unequal hours: sunrise to sunset is split into 12 day horās and sunset to the next sunrise into 12 night horās, so day and night hours differ in length except at the equinoxes. Turn on Equal hours to split the full 24 hours evenly instead. The footer always states which you're seeing.
With Equal hours on, every horā is exactly one clock hour long.
On the dashboard
On the Vedic dashboard's Transit tab, the strip under the chart becomes a Horā strip: the current planetary hour in the middle, two either side, with a gold pointer showing how far through the hour the slider moment is. The Today's Pañcāṅga card adds a sunrise-to-sunset timings bar and live Horā and Choghadiya tiles — see Panchang.
Good to know
- The day is fixed when the dialog opens; to look at another date, move the time slider on the Transit tab and open the dialog again.
- Before sunrise the selected moment falls outside the calendar day's sunrise-to-sunrise span, so nothing is highlighted as current.
- Dur Muhurta, Varjyam and Amrit Kalam are not included.