The 27 nakshatras: list with lords, rashis, all 108 padas, gana, yoni and nadi

Ask someone in India for their “star” and they will usually name a nakshatra: Rohini, Swati, Revati. The nakshatras are the 27 divisions of the sky that the Moon passes through each month, and the one it occupied at your birth starts your dasha, decides much of marriage matching and sets the daily tarabala.

This page lists all 27 with their lords, deities and symbols, the signs they fall in, their matching attributes and all 108 padas with their navamsa. It also explains how to find your own nakshatra and how much your birth time matters.

What is a nakshatra?

A nakshatra is one of 27 equal divisions of the zodiac, each 13°20′ wide (360° ÷ 27). The first, Ashwini, starts at 0° Aries, and the last, Revati, ends at 30° Pisces. Each nakshatra is split into four padas (quarters) of 3°20′, giving 108 padas in all, exactly nine to each sign.

The positions are sidereal, measured against the stars with an ayanamsa (JyotishiVani uses Lahiri), not in the tropical zodiac of Western astrology; Vedic and Western astrology explains the difference.

Every planet in a kundli (birth chart) sits in a nakshatra and pada, not only the Moon. Many astrologers read a planet partly through the lord of the nakshatra it occupies, its star lord: Saturn in Mula, for example, is read partly through Ketu, Mula’s lord. Krishnamurti Paddhati (KP) builds its whole method on star lords and finer sub-lords. But when people say “my nakshatra” they mean the Moon’s: the janma nakshatra, or birth star.

How your birth nakshatra is used

• The dasha. The lord of your birth nakshatra rules the first period of your Vimshottari dasha, and how far the Moon had travelled through the nakshatra sets the balance at birth.
• Marriage matching. In Ashtakoota (guna milan), four of the eight kootas compare the two birth stars: tara (3 points), yoni (4), gana (6) and nadi (8). That is 21 of the 36 points; the other four kootas use the Moon signs. Seven of the ten South Indian poruthams also compare the two stars. See kundli matching.
• Tarabala. Counting from your birth star to the day’s nakshatra gives one of nine taras, from Janma to Parama Mitra. Muhurta avoids the Vipat, Pratyak and Naidhana taras, and the same count gives the tara koota in matching. See tarabala.
• Naming. Many families still choose the first syllable of a child’s name from the pada of the birth star. Almanacs give a syllable for each of the 108 padas, with small regional differences.

Tarabala, worked out

Count from your birth star to the day’s nakshatra, counting your own star as 1, and divide by nine; the remainder gives the tara, and a remainder of 0 is the ninth, Parama Mitra. For someone born with the Moon in Rohini:

Inclusive count from the birth star; the remainder after dividing by nine gives the tara. Names and short meanings as the app shows them.

Because the lords repeat every nine stars, each tara always holds the three nakshatras that share a lord: for a Rohini birth star, Vipat falls on Rahu’s three. The day’s nakshatra is also one of the five limbs of the panchang, alongside the tithi, the weekday, the yoga and the karana.

The 27 nakshatras: names, lords, deities and symbols

Sidereal spans with the Lahiri ayanamsa. Lords follow the Vimshottari order, as in the app; deities and symbols are those commonly given in the classical lists.

The lords run Ketu, Venus, Sun, Moon, Mars, Rahu, Jupiter, Saturn, Mercury and repeat three times. That is why Ashwini, Magha and Mula all belong to Ketu, and why your birth star decides where your dasha sequence starts.

Nakshatra and rashi are not the same

Your rashi (Moon sign) is the 30° sign the Moon occupied; your nakshatra is the 13°20′ star division within it. A sign holds two and a quarter nakshatras, or nine padas, and the boundaries do not line up: nine of the 27 nakshatras straddle two signs. So two people can share a nakshatra and have different Moon signs (Krittika pada 1 is in Aries, padas 2 to 4 in Taurus), and two people with the same Moon sign can have different nakshatras.

Each sign holds nine padas. Sidereal, Lahiri ayanamsa.

The difference matters in practice. Sade Sati and most transit readings count from the Moon sign, while the dasha, tarabala and four of the eight matching kootas use the nakshatra. If you know only your Moon sign, the table narrows your nakshatra to the three named in its row.

Gana, yoni and nadi of each nakshatra

Marriage matching uses three attributes of each birth star.

• Gana (temperament): Deva (divine), Manushya (human) or Rakshasa (demonic), nine nakshatras each. The gana koota is worth 6 points.
• Yoni (an animal): 14 animals, compared for instinctive compatibility, worth 4 points. Thirteen of the animals belong to two nakshatras each, and the mongoose to Uttara Ashadha alone.
• Nadi: Adi, Madhya or Antya, nine nakshatras each. When both partners share a nadi the koota scores zero of its 8 points, which tradition calls nadi dosha. Across every possible pair of Moon padas, that happens in exactly a third of pairs.

Gana, yoni and nadi as used in Ashtakoota matching: the same tables the app uses.

A word on Rakshasa gana, since it worries people: it is a traditional temperament label that a third of all nakshatras carry, used to compare two people in matching. It is not a verdict on anyone’s character.

How to find your nakshatra

You need three things: your date, time and place of birth. The place gives the time zone and the correct historical UTC offset. From the exact moment, the Moon’s sidereal longitude is calculated and placed among the 27 divisions.

Once you have the Moon’s sidereal position, the arithmetic is simple. Take a Moon at Libra 12°40′:

1. Count from 0° Aries. Libra begins at 180°, so the Moon is at 192°40′.
2. Divide by 13°20′. 192°40′ ÷ 13°20′ = 14.45, so 14 nakshatras are complete and the Moon is in the 15th, Swati, whose lord is Rahu.
3. Find the pada. Swati begins at Libra 6°40′, so the Moon is 6°00′ into it. Each pada is 3°20′, which puts it in pada 2.
4. Read off the navamsa. Swati 2 is the 58th of the 108 padas, and the table at the end of this page gives its navamsa: Capricorn.

The date alone is rarely enough. The Moon covers about one nakshatra a day: 24.3 hours on average, anywhere from 20.8 to 27.2 hours. So on 93 days in 100 it is in two different nakshatras during the same calendar day, and on about 3 in 100 it touches three. It crosses a pada in about six hours (5.2 to 6.8) and a sign in about two and a quarter days.

How much your birth time matters

The Moon moves about 0.55° an hour, so an uncertain birth time leaves it somewhere inside a window. If a boundary falls inside that window, the value is uncertain. With an average Moon, a birth time known to plus or minus two hours is a window of 2.2°. Against a nakshatra of 13.33° that leaves about 1 chart in 6 with two possible nakshatras; against a pada of 3.33°, about 2 in 3; against a sign of 30°, about 1 in 14.

Share of 100,000 random moments between 1950 and 2010 at which the Moon’s sign, nakshatra or pada changes inside the window (Swiss Ephemeris, Lahiri). The simple estimate, window ÷ span, gives the same figures.

These are averages. Whether your own chart is affected depends on how close your Moon is to a boundary, and a calculation can check that directly.

Is any nakshatra good or bad?

No nakshatra is best or worst. Each has its own lord, deity, symbol and traditional character, and the texts describe tendencies, not ranks. What a nakshatra means for you depends on the rest of your chart and on your dashas, and in matching on the other person’s star too: compatibility belongs to the pair, not to one star. Many worries about a “bad” birth nakshatra concern the ganda moola nakshatras at the gandanta junctions described below, which cover far more births than the worry suggests.

Abhijit, the 28th nakshatra

Some early Vedic star lists name 28 nakshatras, adding Abhijit between Uttara Ashadha and Shravana. In the 27-fold division used for dashas, matching and the panchang, Abhijit has no span of its own. Where it is used, mainly in some muhurta charts, it runs from 276°40′ to about 280°53′ of the sidereal zodiac: from Capricorn 6°40′ to about 10°53′, covering the last pada of Uttara Ashadha and the first 53′ or so of Shravana.

Don’t confuse it with Abhijit muhurta, which is a time of day: the eighth of the fifteen daytime muhurtas, about 48 minutes centred on local noon, widely held auspicious for beginning work.

Gandanta: where water signs meet fire signs

Gandanta is the point where a water sign ends and a fire sign begins: Cancer into Leo, Scorpio into Sagittarius, Pisces into Aries. Each is also a nakshatra junction (Ashlesha into Magha, Jyeshtha into Mula, Revati into Ashwini), and the last pada before and the first pada after each junction are traditionally treated as sensitive. Definitions of the exact width vary.

Births with the Moon in any of those six nakshatras are called ganda moola (gand mool). That is 6 of the 27 nakshatras, so about 2 births in 9 qualify; the narrower gandanta padas are 6 of 108, about 1 birth in 18. It is a traditional label for a common placement, not a forecast. The tradition prescribes a pacifying rite; JyotishiVani explains the term and has no rites, remedies or pujas to sell.

The 108 padas and their navamsa

Each pada is 3°20′ wide, the same width as a division of the navamsa (D9), so the pada a planet occupies fixes its navamsa sign. Counting padas from Ashwini 1, the navamsa runs through the signs from Aries to Pisces and starts again every 12 padas: Ashwini 1 is Aries, Krittika 1 is Sagittarius and Rohini 1 is Aries again. That is why the first padas of Ashwini, Magha and Mula, which open the three fire signs, all fall in the Aries navamsa. Divisional charts explains how the navamsa is read.

Twelve padas put a planet in the same sign in both charts, which texts call vargottama and read as a source of steadiness and strength: Ashwini 1, Rohini 2, Punarvasu 3 and 4, Purva Phalguni 1, Chitra 2 and 3, Anuradha 4, Uttara Ashadha 1 and 2, Shatabhisha 3 and Revati 4.

Pada k, counting Ashwini 1 as 0, falls in navamsa sign k mod 12, with Aries as 0. Sidereal, Lahiri ayanamsa.

How JyotishiVani uses your nakshatra

• Your kundli shows every planet’s sign, degree, nakshatra and pada; the Moon’s nakshatra is your birth star. See the kundli page.
• Matching compares the two Moon nakshatras for tara, yoni, gana and nadi in Ashtakoota, or through the star-based poruthams in the South Indian system. See kundli matching.
• Your dashas, Vimshottari and Yogini, start from it. See Vimshottari dasha.
• The Today screen counts the day’s nakshatra from your birth star (tarabala) when it explains the day.
• Your birth time is checked. The app recalculates the Moon across the uncertainty in your birth time. If the nakshatra changes inside that window, it is treated as uncertain, and no reading relies on it.