Rahu Kaal today

“Ninety minutes” is the equinox figure. Rahu Kaal is an eighth of the real daylight, so it stretches and shrinks with the year. In New Delhi on 21 June 2026 the sun is up for 13 hr 58 min and the Sunday window runs 5:37 PM to 7:21 PM, 105 minutes. On 21 December the day is 10 hr 19 min and Monday’s window is 8:26 AM to 9:44 AM, 77 minutes. In New Delhi today, for example, it is 1 hr 23 min. Further from the equator the swing is wider: London’s Rahu Kaal on 21 December is 59 minutes.

It is the same eighth that one day choghadiya occupies, so on any given day the two are always exactly the same length.

The table of eighths reads more easily as a shape. Monday, Saturday and Friday put Rahu Kaal in the morning, the second, third and fourth parts of the day. Wednesday and Thursday put it around midday, the fifth and sixth. Tuesday has it in the afternoon, the seventh, and Sunday in the last light before sunset, the eighth. Because no weekday takes the first part, roughly the first ninety minutes of every day are free of it, by arithmetic rather than dispensation. The strip further down gives the clock times for this week.

Same weekday, different cities, different clocks. On Wednesday 16 September 2026 Rahu Kaal runs 12:03 to 1:35 PM in Chennai, 12:15 to 1:48 PM in New Delhi and 12:34 to 2:06 PM in Ahmedabad: Chennai’s sun rises eight minutes before Delhi’s and Ahmedabad’s twenty minutes after, and the eighths move with it. A table for one city is wrong for the next.

Between websites the difference is a minute or two, and it comes from the astronomy rather than the rule. Every panchang divides the day into the same eighths; they differ on when the day starts. Whether “sunrise” means the sun’s upper edge or its centre changes the moment by a minute or two. Whether the atmosphere’s bending of light near the horizon is counted changes it again. Add rounding, and two honest panchangs can differ by one to three minutes on every boundary. This site uses the upper edge with refraction, the convention Indian panchangs follow, and checks the result against a published reference; how sunrise is defined here has the detail.

Rahu Kaal and the day choghadiya are the same eight cuts of the same daylight, so each weekday’s Rahu Kaal is one named choghadiya: Sunday Udveg, Monday Kaal, Tuesday Shubh, Wednesday Rog, Thursday Amrit, Friday Kaal, Saturday Rog. In New Delhi today, for example, that is Shubh, 2:50 PM – 4:12 PM. On five days it lands on a period the choghadiya already marks as one to avoid; on Tuesday and Thursday it lands on a good one, Shubh and Amrit, and there the tradition is clear that Rahu Kaal wins: an auspicious choghadiya that overlaps it is set aside. Rahu Kaal also spans parts of two planetary hours, since the hora grid is twelfths.

The three Kaal windows are the same eighths chosen by three weekday rules, which is why they sit together under the eight cities above: in New Delhi today, for example, Yamaganda is 9:19 AM – 10:42 AM and Gulika Kaal is 12:05 PM – 1:27 PM, and the three never overlap. The counterweight is Abhijit Muhurat, the midday window on a fifteen-part division of the same daylight, 11:43 AM – 12:27 PM today. By arithmetic the only Rahu Kaal slot that reaches the middle of the day is Wednesday’s fifth eighth, and Wednesday is the one weekday on which Abhijit is held void, so the two never share a minute on a day Abhijit counts. Dur Muhurtam is on that fifteen-part grid as well and can straddle a Rahu Kaal edge; Brahma Muhurta belongs to the night’s division and has nothing to do with the daylight eighths at all.