Rahu Kaal time today: Rahu Kalam, Yamaganda, Gulika

Today, in the city you pick

Under the modern convention this calculator follows, three of the eight daily divisions carry a weekday-fixed warning: avoid starting something new. This page computes where those three fall today, or on any date you pick, for the city you pick from nineteen, from the same engine and the same sunrise and sunset convention as our choghadiya calculator. You may also see these spelt Rahu Kalam, Yamaganda (also Yamagandam) and Gulikai Kalam (our Gulika Kaal). Drik Panchang's tables write all three that way, and Kalaprakasika writes Rahu Kalam and Yamaganda.

How the eight are built, and which three are marked

Daylight, sunrise to sunset, is divided into eight equal parts, exactly as choghadiya divides it, but Rahu Kaal is a daytime period only: Kalaprakasika says it occurs only during the day-time. Kalaprakasika also gives separate night sequences for Yamaganda and Gulika, which this tool does not compute. This tool marks three of the eight daytime parts: Rahu Kaal, Yamaganda and Gulika Kaal. Kalaprakasika names others too (Ardhapraharam and Kalan among them), which this tool does not mark. Which part is which is fixed by the weekday and nothing else. This table alone does not decide a muhurta; the nakshatra running that day is a separate consideration.

This table is not our own reckoning, and all three sequences are classical. Kalaprakasika, a classical muhurta text (N. P. Subramania Iyer's translation, first published 1917; we cite the 1982 reprint), divides the twelve hours of the day, 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., into eight periods of an hour and a half and gives the Yamaganda and Gulika sequences in those terms. It gives Rahu Kalam as fixed clock times (Sunday 4:30 to 6, Monday 7:30 to 9, and so on), which are the same weekday positions in the same eight. Where this calculator differs from that table is the day it divides: like Drik Panchang's tables, it divides the real span from sunrise to sunset for your city and date, not a fixed 6-to-6 day. Yamaganda and Gulika Kaal are their own sequences, not Rahu Kaal's read out of order.

Yamaganda and Gulika Kaal are two further periods that Drik Panchang's tables list alongside Rahu Kaal. The three are not treated identically even in the sources that name all three: Kalaprakasika lists Gulika as favourable for a number of activities, including buying and selling, medical treatment and initiation, and says of these functions that "Gulika has no evil force. It is a benefic" (the Gulika passage near p. 192 of the Iyer translation; a footnote to its earlier definition of Gulika (near p. 175) adds that Gulika "is not considered inauspicious, though included in this chapter", while another passage speaks of its adverse effects being nullified under certain placements, so the text is mixed), while Drik Panchang lists it as a period to avoid, alongside Rahu Kaal and Yamaganda. We show all three with the same weekday-avoid framing because that is Drik Panchang's convention, not because the classical text says so: a reader following Kalaprakasika has reason not to treat Gulika Kaal as inauspicious the way Rahu Kaal is. Its timing is not in dispute: like Rahu Kaal, it is the eighth of the day that the weekday assigns. Not every tradition tracks all three; some readers will only want the Rahu Kaal column of the weekday table.

Sunrise and sunset here use the same convention as the choghadiya page: the sun's upper limb with standard refraction (1013.25 mbar, 15 °C), from the Swiss Ephemeris. Drik Panchang says it uses the upper edge of the sun with refraction too. It is not the only convention in use. The Swiss Ephemeris also has a Hindu-calendar rising mode that takes the sun's centre without refraction (documented here), and Drik Panchang lets readers switch to the middle limb; either moves sunrise and sunset.

What this tool does not do

What it is not

Rahu Kaal, Yamaganda and Gulika Kaal are conventions about time, not a claim about outcomes. The traditional reading is that new undertakings are avoided during all three. Our position is that we can tell you accurately what the tradition says and when the periods fall, and cannot tell you that starting something during Rahu Kaal will go badly.

Nothing here should decide something that matters medically, legally or financially. Some readers check this table before beginning a journey or a ceremony; it is not a basis for deciding whether to seek treatment.

The calculation runs on our own engine and the page shows what it returns. If the engine does not answer, the page says so and shows nothing rather than substituting an approximation. A tool that quietly falls back to an estimate is the same failure as an ephemeris quietly falling back, which this site has shipped once and written up in its own correction history on the methodology page.

Each of the nineteen cities uses one fixed pair of coordinates, a populated-place point for that city, not a street address. A place elsewhere in a large city, or in another town, will see the times shift: solar time moves about four minutes for every degree of longitude. The same limit methodology states for birth places applies here.