01What is gochar (gochar kya hota hai)?
Gochar (गोचर) is the Sanskrit word for transit: the current position of a graha, as against its natal position in your birth chart. The word means roughly "moving through pasture", the pasture being the zodiac. Jyotish reads the two together and treats them as answering different questions. Your birth chart is fixed and says what a life is made of; gochar changes daily and says what is passing over it now. Neither is read alone: a transit over an empty house of a chart that has nothing to do with it is simply weather.
02Where are the planets transiting today?
The Moon changes rashi about every two and a quarter days and the Sun about every thirty; Mars takes roughly six weeks in a sign, Jupiter about a year, Saturn about two and a half, and Rahu and Ketu move backwards through a sign in about eighteen months. So on any given day the fast bodies have moved and the slow ones have not, which is why a daily transit reading is mostly a Moon reading and a yearly one is mostly a Jupiter and Saturn reading. This page computes all nine for today, sidereal, on the Lahiri (Chitrapaksha) ayanamsha, and prints each one to the degree with its rashi and nakshatra.
The Moon: a new rashi every two and a quarter days
The Moon covers about thirteen degrees a day, crossing a nakshatra roughly daily and a rashi in about two and a quarter days. It is the only graha that moves enough for a genuinely daily reading, which is why Chandra Bala, Tara Bala and the tithi all depend on it. Anything described as today's transit and not tomorrow's is almost always a statement about the Moon.
The Sun, Mercury and Venus: about a month to a sign
The Sun changes rashi about every thirty days, and those ingresses (the sankrantis) are what the solar calendar is built on. Mercury and Venus never stray far from the Sun as seen from Earth, so they keep broadly to the same pace, though both turn retrograde periodically and can sit in one sign considerably longer. All three are month-scale rather than day-scale.
Mars: roughly six weeks in a sign
Mars takes about forty-five days to cross a rashi and a little under two years to go round, but the figure is an average rather than a rule. Its retrograde loop comes about every twenty-six months, and during one it can spend six months or more in the same sign, crossing the same degrees three times. So a Mars transit is sometimes a season and sometimes half a year.
Jupiter: about a year in a sign
Guru takes roughly twelve years to complete the zodiac, so it spends about a year in each rashi. Its ingress is one of the two transits an annual forecast is usually built around, and its position relative to your natal Moon is what the traditional counts read. Because it is retrograde about four months a year, the sign change itself can happen more than once around a boundary.
Saturn: about two and a half years
Shani takes roughly twenty-nine and a half years to go round, so about two and a half in a sign. It is the slowest of the visible grahas and the one the tradition talks about most, because Sade Sati and Shani Dhaiya are both defined by where it stands relative to your natal Moon. Its retrograde period means a sign boundary is often crossed, recrossed and crossed again.
Rahu and Ketu: eighteen months, backwards
The nodes are not bodies but the two points where the Moon's path cuts the ecliptic, and they move backwards through the zodiac, taking about eighteen months to a sign and around eighteen and a half years to go round. They are always exactly opposite each other, so a Rahu transit is a Ketu transit six signs away, and the pair is read together rather than singly.
03How do I read today's transit chart (aaj ka gochar) for myself?
Count houses from your natal Moon, which is what classical gochar does, not from the Sun sign and not from the lagna alone. A graha in the 3rd, 6th, 10th or 11th from the Moon is read as favourably placed for most purposes; the 4th, 8th and 12th are the difficult counts. The classical qualifier is vedha: another graha sitting in a specific obstructing house cancels the reading, which is why a bare "Jupiter is in your 11th" is not yet a judgement. This report counts from your Moon and your lagna both, and says which it is using at each point.
04Why does the same transit affect two people differently?
Because the count is personal. Saturn entering Meena is one event in the sky and twelve different readings on the ground: it is the 12th from a Mesha Moon, the 11th from a Vrishabha Moon, and so on around the zodiac. On top of that the transiting graha falls on whatever your natal chart already has there, and it does so while you are running a particular dasha. This is the reason a rashifal written for twelve signs can only ever be a twelfth of the answer, and why this page asks for a birth chart before it says anything.
05What is the difference between gochar and dasha?
They time different scales and the tradition uses them together. Dasha (Vimshottari most commonly) divides a life into periods governed by one graha at a time, and says which part of the chart is currently live. Gochar says where the grahas actually are. The conventional rule is that dasha proposes and transit disposes: a transit over a house is read as significant when the dasha lord is already connected to that house, and largely discounted when it is not. Our Vimshottari dasha calculator gives the other half.
06How do I know if Sade Sati is running?
Sade Sati is Saturn's passage through the 12th, 1st and 2nd signs from your natal Moon: three signs at roughly two and a half years each, hence seven and a half. Because Saturn goes retrograde it can leave a sign and re-enter it, so an honest report gives dated spans rather than one continuous block. The related transit is Shani Dhaiya, Saturn over the 4th or 8th from the Moon, which lasts about two and a half years. Our Sade Sati calculator shows the phases and their dates.
07What do Chandra Bala and Tara Bala measure?
Two quick strength checks for a particular day. Chandra Bala counts the transiting Moon's rashi from your natal Moon; some counts are held favourable and some are not. Tara Bala counts the transiting nakshatra from your janma nakshatra into nine taras that repeat three times over the twenty-seven, of which Janma, Vipat, Pratyak and Naidhana are the unfavourable ones. Both are day-scale tools, used for choosing when to do something rather than for reading a year.
08What does retrograde or combust mean in a transit?
Retrograde (vakri) is apparent backward motion, caused by the Earth overtaking an outer planet or being overtaken. The graha does not reverse; the geometry of watching it from a moving Earth does. Jyotish reads a retrograde graha as strong but turned inward, and it matters practically because a retrograde Saturn or Jupiter re-crosses the same degrees three times. Combust (asta) is a graha too close to the Sun to be seen, within an orb that differs per graha, and is read as weakened. Rahu and Ketu are shadows: they are always retrograde and are never combust.
Retrograde (vakri) is apparent, not real
Nothing actually reverses. An outer planet appears to loop backwards while the faster Earth overtakes it, and Mercury and Venus do the same as they pass between us and the Sun. What makes it practical rather than merely geometric is the re-crossing: a retrograde Saturn or Jupiter passes the same degrees three times, so a transit over a natal point can be a single event or three.
Combust (asta) is proximity to the Sun
A graha within a certain arc of the Sun is lost in its glare and is read as weakened. The orb is not one number: it differs per graha, and for Mercury and Venus it differs again depending on whether they are direct or retrograde. Combustion is what removes Venus and Jupiter from the vivah muhurat calendar for weeks at a time, so it has practical consequences well beyond reading a transit.
Rahu and Ketu are the exception to both
Rahu and Ketu are not bodies and cast no light, so neither rule applies to them in the ordinary way. They are always retrograde by definition, which means retrogression carries no information about them at all, and they are never combust however close to the Sun they fall. Any report that flags a node as newly retrograde or as combust is telling you about its own arithmetic.
09What can a transit chart not tell you?
It cannot tell you what is going to happen to you, and we will not write it as though it can. Gochar describes a geometry (which graha is crossing which house, counted from your Moon) and the tradition attaches meanings to those counts that we report and attribute. No transit has been shown to cause an event, and the same transit runs over millions of charts that share your Moon sign. What this page does exactly is the astronomy and the counting, with the rule behind every line shown next to it.
