Choose a town or city above, and a date if you want a day other than today, and this free lagna table lists every rising sign from that day’s sunrise to the next sunrise, with the time each one begins and ends, in the local time of that place. When the date is today, it also says which sign is rising at this moment and until when.
How it works
The lagna is the sign of the zodiac rising on the eastern horizon. As the Earth turns, all twelve signs rise one after another in a little under a day, so the lagna changes about every two hours. The tool works out the rising degree at your place from its latitude and longitude, with the sidereal zodiac of the Lahiri ayanamsa and planet positions from NASA JPL DE440, the same as the ascendant calculator and the birth chart tools on this site. It steps through the day two minutes at a time and finds each change of sign to the second.
The day runs from sunrise to the next sunrise, as a panchang day does, so the table usually has thirteen rows: the sign already rising at sunrise, the eleven that follow, and the sign rising again when the next sunrise comes. Far north or south, on a date with no sunrise to sunrise day (the polar night, the midnight sun, or a last sunset before the polar night), the table runs from local midnight to the next midnight instead and says why. The sunrise is worked out for your place with the upper edge of the Sun on the horizon and the usual allowance for refraction.
Reading the result
Each row gives the sign, its lord, the time it starts rising, the time it ends and how long it lasts. The first row began before sunrise and the last runs past the next sunrise; both are marked. A time with a date in brackets falls after midnight. When the date is today, a line above the table names the sign rising now and the table marks its row. Between midnight and the first row, the moment still belongs to the day before, so the line names the sign from that day’s table and no row is marked. The lengths are not equal: signs rise at different speeds, and the speeds change with the latitude, so the same sign can last much longer in one city than in another.
A lagna table is used for lagna shuddhi, the choice of the rising sign at the exact hour of a muhurta, once the day itself has been chosen. The table gives the times only. Whether a particular sign suits a particular event depends on the event and on the rest of the chart of that moment, which is for your family astrologer.
How we checked it
We compared the table with the Udaya Lagna lists that Drik Panchang prints on its daily pages, for 43 days in New Delhi and 6 days in New York between October 2026 and August 2027. Drik Panchang lists one round of twelve signs from sunrise, while our table goes on to the sign rising at the next sunrise, so ours has a thirteenth row, and a fourteenth when a sign begins to rise in the last minutes before the next sunrise, as on 17 November 2026 in New Delhi. We compared the rows the two lists share. Of the 473 sign changes in New Delhi, 315 fell in the same minute and 158 one minute later in our table. In New York our 66 times were one or two minutes earlier than Drik Panchang’s. We also recomputed every sign change for 17 places and dates with the Swiss Ephemeris (pyswisseph, sidereal Lahiri), including Fiji in the southern hemisphere, London, New York and Sydney on the days the clocks change, Reykjavik in summer, and the first and last years the tool accepts: all 221 sign changes agreed within one second. Far north and south we checked 76 tables against the Swiss Ephemeris’s rising degree, on dates through 2026 at 70 degrees north (near Alta in Norway), Tromso, Longyearbyen, McMurdo in Antarctica, Rovaniemi and New Delhi: the same signs in the same order in all 791 rows, every change of sign within one second, and the same rows in reverse order, the same jumps and the same signs that never rise.
Where traditions differ
Every almanac that uses the Lahiri ayanamsa gives the same signs, but the minutes can differ by one or two, because each one works out the sunrise and the rising degree in its own way. When a sign changes within a minute of sunrise, one almanac can start its list with that sign and another with the one before; on 17 December 2026 this happened in both New Delhi and New York. An almanac that uses another ayanamsa moves every change. With the Swiss Ephemeris we found that the Raman ayanamsa makes each change about four to seven minutes earlier in Indian cities, and the KP ayanamsa less than a minute earlier.
What it does not do
It does not judge a sign as good or bad for an event, and it does not give the navamsha or the Pushkara parts of each sign. It is not your birth lagna: for that, use the ascendant calculator. Inside the polar circles it gives the rising degree as the Swiss Ephemeris gives it, with the signs that rise in reverse order and the jumps marked; how a lagna is to be used there is for your family astrologer. For a ready list of good days for an event, use the muhurat finder.
Frequently asked questions
↳ What is a lagna table?
It is the list of the rising signs of one day at one place, with the time each sign begins and ends. Panchangs print it so that a muhurta can be set in a chosen rising sign.
↳ Why does the table start before sunrise?
The first sign was already rising when the Sun came up. The tool gives its real start time, so you can see how much of it is left at sunrise.
↳ Why are some signs shorter than others?
The signs cross the horizon at an angle that changes from sign to sign, so some rise quickly and some slowly. How quickly also depends on the latitude, so the lengths in Delhi differ from those in London.
↳ Does the lagna table change from city to city?
Yes. The rising sign depends on where you are. Two cities on the same day have the same order of signs but different times, so always use the table for your own place.
↳ Is this the same as my birth lagna?
No. This shows the signs rising on the date you choose. Your birth lagna is the sign that was rising at the moment you were born, which the ascendant calculator finds from your birth time and place.
↳ Why are some signs missing near the poles?
Inside the polar circles part of the zodiac never meets the horizon, so those signs are never the lagna there. At 70 degrees north, near Alta in Norway, Mithuna (Gemini) and Dhanu (Sagittarius) never rise, and at McMurdo in Antarctica, nearly 78 degrees south, six signs never rise. For some hours of each day the other signs rise in reverse order, and twice a day the rising degree jumps by half the zodiac. The table marks these, as the Swiss Ephemeris gives them.
↳ Which ayanamsa does it use?
The Lahiri ayanamsa, the one used across this site and by most Indian almanacs. Our accuracy page explains how the positions are checked.