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Padas

What changes at a nakshatra pada boundary?

A pada is a quarter of a nakshatra; nine make a sign. See which labels a small move changes, and where sign, nakshatra and pada change together.

01 · Three scales on one ruler

Most pada boundaries change only the pada; a few change everything at once.

A pada is a quarter of a nakshatra, 3°20′, so nine padas make a sign. Most of the time a point crossing a pada line stays in the same nakshatra and sign. Where a nakshatra boundary meets a sign boundary, as at 0° Leo, one step changes all three.

Sign, nakshatra and pada scales: Moon, 17:00Four nested scales of sidereal longitude from the start of Pushya to the end of Magha: signs of 30°, nakshatras of 13°20′, padas of 3°20′, and the navamsa sign each pada maps to. A line marks Moon at 9°59′ Cancer. Moon: Cancer, Pushya pada 2, navamsa Virgo.SIDEREAL LONGITUDE, PUSHYA TO MAGHASign, 30°CancerLeoNakshatra, 13°20′PushyaAshleshaMaghaPada, 3°20′123412341234Navamsa sign of each padaLeoVirLibScoSagCapAquPisAriTauGemCanMoon 9°59′ Cancer10° Can20° Can0° Leo10° Leo
1 Nov 2026, 17:00 ISTMoon: Cancer, Pushya pada 2, navamsa Virgo
Positions from the site’s birth chart engine for the fictional Delhi chart of 1 November 2026.

Nested scales

The sidereal zodiac is divided three ways at once, and the divisions nest:

  • 12 signs of 30°.
  • 27 nakshatras of 13°20′, as the Moon among the nakshatras shows.
  • 108 padas (पाद, “quarter”) of 3°20′, four to each nakshatra.

Nine padas make exactly one sign, because 9 × 3°20′ = 30°. So every sign boundary is also a pada boundary. Nakshatras, though, do not fit signs evenly: a sign holds two and a quarter of them. Every ninth pada line is a sign boundary and every fourth a nakshatra boundary, so only every thirty-sixth, at 0° Aries, 0° Leo and 0° Sagittarius, is both.

What a small move changes

In the fictional chart for 1 November 2026 in Delhi, the Moon was crossing 10°00′ Cancer around 17:01 IST:

  • At 17:00 it was in Cancer, Pushya, pada 2.
  • At 17:05 it was in Cancer, Pushya, pada 3.

Only the pada changed. That is the usual case: of every four pada lines, three lie inside a nakshatra, and most of those lie inside a sign.

Jupiter in the same chart stood at 0°09′ Leo, just past one of the three-way junctions. It is in Leo, Magha, pada 1. Jupiter had crossed that line at 08:55 IST on 31 October; until then it was in Cancer, Ashlesha, pada 4. One crossing gave it a new sign, a new nakshatra and a new pada at once. Tradition calls these water to fire junctions gandanta and treats them as sensitive points.

Why the pada matters

Each pada maps to one navamsa sign, counted on round the zodiac: the first pada of Ashwini to Aries, the second to Taurus, and so on, the twelve signs repeating nine times round the zodiac. The Moon’s step from Pushya 2 to Pushya 3 is therefore also a step from a Virgo navamsa to a Libra one, which is what why a planet’s Navamsa sign is different explores. Padas also carry their own traditional readings; the nakshatra and pada guide explains how the Kundli page uses them.

Because a pada is only 3°20′, the Moon crosses one in about six hours, and the ascendant in about 13 minutes. Can five minutes change a birth chart? shows how often a small birth-time error moves one.

Calculate a chart and see each planet’s pada on the Kundli page, or explore another topic in Learn.