Hora Planetary Hours: Hora Chart, Timings and Uses

A hora is a planetary hour: the daytime from sunrise to sunset is divided into 12 equal horas and the night into 12 more, and each is ruled in turn by the Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon, Saturn, Jupiter or Mars. The first hora after sunrise always belongs to the lord of the weekday, which is why people use horas to match a task to the planet that suits it.

Where horas come from

The word hora is traditionally traced to ahoratra, “day and night”. The planets take turns in a fixed order, from the slowest to the fastest as seen from Earth (Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, the Sun, Venus, Mercury and the Moon), and the hora sequence simply runs through that order starting from the Sun: Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, then the Sun again.

This one cycle also explains the order of the week. A day holds 24 horas, and 24 steps through a cycle of seven move it on by three places. So if Sunday’s first hora belongs to the Sun, the 25th hora, the first of the next day, belongs to the Moon, and the day is Monday. Three more places bring Mars and Tuesday, then Mercury and Wednesday, Jupiter and Thursday, Venus and Friday, and Saturn and Saturday. The order of the seven varas, the weekdays, follows straight from the planetary hours.

How to work out the horas

You need three times for your city: sunrise, sunset and the next sunrise.

1. Daytime horas: divide the time from sunrise to sunset by 12.
2. Night horas: divide the time from sunset to the next sunrise by 12.
3. Name them: the first daytime hora belongs to the weekday’s lord; each later hora takes the next planet in the order Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, and the sequence carries on through the night without a break.

Here is a real day. In New Delhi on Thursday 12 November 2026, the Sun rises at 6:41 a.m. and sets at 5:29 p.m., so the daytime lasts 10 hours 48 minutes and each daytime hora 54 minutes. The night until the next sunrise lasts about 13 hours 13 minutes, so each night hora runs to 66 minutes. Times are local and rounded to the minute:

The first night hora, from 5:29 p.m., belongs to the Moon, and the cycle continues until sunrise on Friday, when Venus takes the first hora of the new day.

Hora chart for every weekday

The order never changes; only the starting planet does. Read across for your weekday. These tables give the planets only, because the clock times depend on your city and the date.

Daytime horas (from sunrise):

Night horas (from sunset):

Two handy checks: the 8th hora of every day repeats the 1st, and the night horas before sunrise still belong to the previous day, because the Vedic day begins at sunrise.

What each hora suits

Each hora takes on the character of its planet. These are the traditional associations:

Mars and Saturn horas are not harmful hours. Tradition simply prefers not to begin something new in them, while work that suits their nature carries on as usual.

Some everyday examples show how families use them. A Mercury hora is a common choice for signing papers, sending an important application or starting a course; a Jupiter hora for meeting a teacher, opening an account or beginning a puja; a Venus hora for buying jewellery or clothes for a wedding; and a Moon hora for setting out on a journey. In Tamil Nadu, where the hora is called horai, households often check for a Guru or Sukra horai before starting a task. None of this promises an outcome. It is a way of beginning in a supportive hour, after the preparation is done.

How to use horas sensibly

A hora looks only at the time of day. It does not consider the tithi, the nakshatra or the people involved, so it works best as a fine-tuning tool:

1. Check Rahu Kaal first. Tradition avoids beginnings in Rahu Kaal and Yamaganda whatever the hora.
2. Pick the hora that suits the task, and if possible a favourable choghadiya as well.
3. For milestones, use a full muhurat. Weddings, griha pravesh and naming ceremonies are timed by the whole Panchang, not by the hour alone.

The Delhi example shows why the first step matters. That Thursday, the first Jupiter hora (6:41 to 7:35 a.m.) falls entirely inside Yamaganda, and the second (12:59 to 1:53 p.m.) runs into Rahu Kaal, which begins at 1:26 p.m. The cleanest Jupiter window by day is therefore 12:59 to 1:26 p.m., with another full Jupiter hora that evening, from 7:41 to 8:47 p.m., when Rahu Kaal no longer applies.

Our guides to Rahu Kaal and to choghadiya explain those two systems. Hora and choghadiya use the same planetary order and often agree; where they differ, hora is the finer tool for a task tied to one planet.

Hora outside India

Because horas are measured from local sunrise and sunset, they change through the year and with latitude. Even in India the swing is noticeable:

Away from the tropics the difference grows, which is why a hora table copied from an Indian calendar is of little use to a family in Toronto or Manchester.

Some wall calendars print horas as fixed clock hours from 6 a.m. That is a shortcut. It drifts from the true horas as sunrise moves, and abroad it can be wrong by more than an hour. A Panchang calculated for your own city avoids the problem.

How to see today’s horas

Open our free Panchang and choose your city. The hora card lists all 24 planetary hours for the day with their local start and end times, marks each as favourable, neutral or best avoided, and highlights the one running now. Before sunrise it shows the previous night’s horas, since the new day has not yet begun. The same page shows sunrise, Rahu Kaal and the choghadiya, so you can check them together.