Sources & credits

The data and methods behind the charts and the sky. Updated July 2026.

The jyotish tradition

The nakshatra system, the Vimshottari dasha cycle, the koota scheme of guna milan, the varga divisions and the panchang limbs are all ancient, unowned knowledge, thousands of years older than any copyright term. Muhura computes them from first principles. Every line of interpretive writing in the app is original and was written for it; none is taken from a modern author.

Ayanamsa

Sidereal positions use the Lahiri (Chitrapaksha) ayanamsa, the standard adopted by the Calendar Reform Committee of the Government of India and the one most Indian panchangs are printed with.

Planetary positions

Graha positions are computed from the VSOP87 planetary theory (Bretagnon and Francou, Bureau des Longitudes) and standard algorithms from Jean Meeus, Astronomical Algorithms, then converted to sidereal longitudes. These are published scientific methods; Muhura's implementation is entirely its own.

Star positions and brightness

Star coordinates and magnitudes, including the yogatara junction stars that mark the nakshatras, are physical facts drawn from the Hipparcos catalogue, the Yale Bright Star Catalogue and the HYG compilation. Factual astronomical measurements are not subject to copyright.

Constellation figures

The constellation stick figures in the sky view (which stars are joined into each shape) are derived from the official IAU constellation figures by Sky & Telescope (Alan MacRobert, Roger Sinnott, Rick Fienberg), used under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence. The sidereal frame rotates the boundary ring; the star figures themselves are unchanged.

Places

Birthplace search runs entirely on your device against an offline extract of the GeoNames geographical database, used under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. Nothing you type into that field leaves the phone.

Typefaces

Muhura is set in Fraunces and Mulish, both offered under the SIL Open Font License and bundled with this site so your visit is never tracked by a font host. Indic text is rendered in your own device's system fonts.

Contact

Questions: hello@muhura.app