The 27 nakshatras (lunar mansions) slice the zodiac into equal 13°20′ arcs, each split into four 3°20′ padas. AstroWatch reads any chart's grahas straight into this system — this page covers the Nakshatras dialog, how to read its table, and how padas feed the Vimshottari Daśā engine.
The 27 nakshatras, 4 padas each
Each nakshatra spans exactly 360° ÷ 27 = 13°20′ of sidereal longitude, starting at 0° Aries; each of its four padas spans a further quarter, 3°20′. Every nakshatra has a ruling lord, and the lord sequence — Ketu, Venus, Sun, Moon, Mars, Rahu, Jupiter, Saturn, Mercury — repeats every 9 nakshatras straight through all 27. That same 9-lord cycle is what the Vimshottari Daśā engine walks through; see Vimshottari Daśā for how a birth nakshatra becomes a 120-year timeline.
Opening the dialog
View → Nakshatras… opens a table with every graha's nakshatra, pada and lord for the active chart. It's a Pro feature, gated the same way as the rest of the Vedic toolkit. Unlike the chart styles and divisional charts, though, it doesn't need the app to actually be in Sidereal mode or on a square chart style first — see below.
The Moon's row is highlighted and called out at the bottom as the Janma Nakshatra — the birth star the whole Vimshottari Daśā cycle is keyed to.
Reading the table
One row per body — Lagna (Ascendant) first, then Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, Saturn, Rahu and Ketu — each with five columns:
- Sign — the sidereal sign and degree.
- Nakshatra — which of the 27 it falls in.
- Pada — 1 through 4, the quarter within that nakshatra.
- Lord — the nakshatra's ruling planet.
The Moon's row is always highlighted — that's your Janma Nakshatra (birth star), called out again in a note under the table along with its pada and lord. It's the single most-referenced row on the page, since it's the seed the Vimshottari Daśā timeline is built from.
Works on a Tropical chart too
Nakshatras are inherently sidereal, but the dialog doesn't require your chart to be. If the active chart is Tropical, every longitude is converted using your current ayanamsa before it's placed — the subtitle says so explicitly ("Computed from sidereal longitudes · ayanamsa …, chart shown tropical"). That makes this one of the few Vedic tools that's genuinely independent of the Chart Style and Zodiac settings covered on the Wheel, North, South & East Styles page.
Why padas matter beyond the table
A pada is more than a quarter-nakshatra label — its 3°20′ width is the same resolution the Navāṁśa (D9) divisional chart is computed at for dual (mutable) signs, which is part of why Vedic astrologers cross- reference nakshatra pada and Navāṁśa placement together. See Divisional Charts (Vargas) for the D9 and the other fifteen Shodaśavarga divisions.
What's next
The Moon's nakshatra and pada found here are exactly what seeds the Vimshottari Daśā timeline — the 120-year period sequence that also shows up automatically on the Dashboard once you're in Sidereal mode: Vimshottari Daśā →