Abhijit Muhurat
How is Abhijit Muhurat placed around midday?
Abhijit is the middle of fifteen equal parts of daylight, centred on local midday. See why it is seldom at 12:00 and why its length changes.
01 · The middle of the daylight
Abhijit is the eighth of fifteen parts of daylight, so it straddles local midday.
Fifteen equal muhurtas run from sunrise to sunset. The eighth is the middle one, centred on the moment halfway between sunrise and sunset. That moment is local midday, and it is seldom 12:00 on the clock.
Fifteen parts of daylight
The traditional day is divided into muhurtas (मुहूर्त): fifteen equal parts from sunrise to sunset, and fifteen more from sunset to the next sunrise. Abhijit is the eighth daytime muhurta, the middle one, with seven before it and seven after.
Its centre is therefore the moment halfway between local sunrise and local sunset: local midday, when the Sun is highest. Its length is one fifteenth of the daylight, which is 48 minutes on a twelve-hour day.
Why it is seldom at noon
Clock time is set for a whole time zone, while midday depends on where the Sun is for the place itself. On 1 November 2026 Kolkata and Mumbai shared one clock, IST, but midday came at 11:19 in Kolkata and 12:21 in Mumbai, about an hour apart, because Mumbai lies more than 15° of longitude farther west. Abhijit followed: 10:57 to 11:42 in Kolkata and 11:59 to 12:44 in Mumbai.
Delhi’s midday sits a little after 12:00 for most of the year, and shifts by up to half an hour across the seasons, because Earth’s orbit is elliptical and its axis is tilted. The window also changes length: 56 minutes on 21 June 2026, with 14 hours of daylight, and 41 minutes on 20 December, with 10 hours 20 minutes.
Not the Abhijit nakshatra
The same name belongs to a different thing in the sky. Abhijit nakshatra is a short stretch of the ecliptic in sidereal Capricorn, used in some nakshatra schemes as a 28th division; it is a place, not a time of day. The Panchang’s Abhijit Muhurat has nothing to do with where the Moon is.
The site follows the convention that Abhijit is not observed on Wednesdays, and shows none that day. The Abhijit guide explains how the window combines with Rahu Kaal and the others.
See today’s Abhijit for your city on the Delhi Panchang, or explore another topic in Learn.