Panchang for Wednesday, 16 December 2026
| Tithi | Saptami |
|---|---|
| Paksha | Shukla |
| Nakshatra | Shatabhisha, pada 3 |
| Yoga | Vajra |
| Karana | Gara |
| Vara | Budhavara |
| Sunrise (Ujjain, IST) | 07:00 |
| Sunset (Ujjain, IST) | 17:43 |
Today's tithi is Saptami, in the Shukla paksha, the waxing half of the lunar month. The Moon moves through Shatabhisha nakshatra, pada 3. The vara is Budhavara, and the panchang's remaining limbs are Vajra yoga and Gara karana.
Shatabhisha nakshatra
Shatabhisha is the twenty fourth nakshatra, from 6°40' to 20°00' of Kumbha (Aquarius), ruled by Rahu, and its name means a hundred healers or a hundred stars.
It is a faint scatter of stars around gamma Aquarii, sometimes read as an empty circle, and it is one of the hardest nakshatras to see from anywhere with streetlights. That faintness suits it: the deity is Varuna, keeper of oaths, of the deep waters and of the things that are hidden and binding at once.
The symbol of an empty circle is read in the classical scheme as an enclosure, a boundary drawn around something to keep it safe or to keep it contained. The hundred healers image gives the nakshatra its long association with medicine and with problems that need many approaches rather than one. The gana is Rakshasa, intense rather than wicked, and the activity class is Chara, movable.
What survives into ordinary use is solitude with a purpose. Some problems only come apart when you sit with them alone for a while, and this is the nakshatra the tradition attached to that, with no suggestion that solitude is the same thing as loneliness.