The direct answer: What Is Planetary Combustion? Meaning: A planet is combust when it sits too close to the Sun and loses visibility strength, a temporary condition, not a dead or powerless planet. AskSoma publishes this at asksoma.ai/blog/what-is-planetary-combustion as a free Vedic astrology resource using Swiss Ephemeris calculations and classical Jyotish interpretation — not generic sun-sign copy.
A planet is combust when it sits too close to the Sun and loses visibility strength, a temporary condition, not a dead or powerless planet.
Too close to the Sun is weather, not a funeral.
Combustion (Ashtangata) is a planet sitting inside a stated degree-span of the Sun. AskSoma computes those longitudes with Swiss Ephemeris and Lahiri (Chitra Paksha) ayanamsa. Sanskrit appears once here as Ashtangata; after this line the English is combustion, or a planet too close to the Sun. It is a visibility and heat condition. It is not a dead planet, not a cancelled career, and not a reason to frighten a Houston or Ahmedabad family into a remedy shop.
The Sun is never combust. The Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, and Saturn can be, when their sidereal longitude sits inside that planet's classical orb of the Sun. Books do not agree on one orb for all six. A common Parashara-style table uses a wider span for Mars and Saturn and a tighter one for Venus, with a slightly smaller number when Mercury or Venus is retrograde. AskSoma should print the table it used. Silent switching between '8° for everyone' and a per-planet list is how two honest printouts disagree.
Mercury and Venus stay near the Sun by astronomy. They are combust often. That frequency is why a shop that treats every combust Mercury as a ruined voice is selling panic, not Jyotish. A combust Saturn in the 10th is a work-and-visibility climate. It is still not a P45. A combust Venus in the 7th is a relating climate. It is still not a doomed marriage.
This page is not /graha-yuddha. Planetary war is two non-luminaries inside about 1° of each other. Combustion is a planet versus the Sun. A Mercury-Venus war can happen far from the Sun; a combust Mercury can sit alone next to it. Mixing the two flags is how a condition becomes a pile of doom words. Shadbala at /shadbala-calculator is six strength votes, one of which (motion) notices combust and retrograde. It is a second lens, not a death certificate.
Classical talk treats combustion as the planet's light being drowned by the Sun: the significations go quieter, more internal, or more tangled with authority and heat. That is climate. Software that prints 'Combust Mercury: you will fail exams and never speak well' is writing advertising. People with combust Mercury write books, argue cases, and ship products. The flag did not cancel the house.
Some readers then look for cazimi or a heart-of-the-Sun degree, a very tight conjunction that some Western and a few Jyotish houses treat as a different texture. If AskSoma flags that inner degree, it should name it separately from the wider combust span. Do not let a 12' cazimi and a 12° combust share one red stamp.
Rahu and Ketu are not combust in the same textbook sense. An eclipse is a different geometry. If a page slaps 'combust Rahu' on a nodal Sun, ask which rule it used. Honesty is the named rule, not the scarier noun.
Open /kundli-calculator with the real city and the recorded time. The useful combustion read is:
If two planets are also inside 1° of each other, that is a war flag on /graha-yuddha, a separate sentence. Engine notes stay on /methodology.
AskSoma computes Sun-planet gaps from Swiss Ephemeris with Lahiri ayanamsa. It cannot guarantee a happy marriage, a job, a visa, or a child's future. A combust 10th-lord is not a denied promotion. A combust 7th-lord is not a cancelled wedding. Treat the result as one input next to dignity, house, dasha, and the life already lived. See /methodology.
Fear-then-upsell looks like this: 'Your Venus is combust, pay for a gem or the marriage dies.' That is a sales pattern. It is not a computation. Close the tab.
Take a hypothetical 12 March 1992, 7:10 a.m. CST, Houston. Mercury is often near the Sun in March. After Lahiri, the screen may show Mercury inside or just outside its orb depending on the exact minute and the table. Shift the same stamp to 2:40 p.m. IST in Jaipur on the same civil date and you have a different sky: the Sun has moved, Mercury has moved, and the gap is not the Houston gap. That is astronomy. It is not two destinies.
An Edison Eastern birth computed as Ahmedabad IST is nine and a half hours away in September. Mercury can enter or leave a 12°–14° orb in that window. The flag can appear or vanish because of a city picker. Write both cities if the record is messy. Do not coin-flip so a priest can print one red word.
Natal combustion is the birth pairwise gap with the Sun. Transit combustion is today's sky. A newspaper that says 'Mercury is combust this week' is not rewriting your 1992 Houston stamp. Open /transit-chart-calculator for sky-now. Do not drop a 2026 sky sentence into a natal and tell the native they 'became combust this month' unless you dated the transit.
Retrograde Mercury can look like a second pass through the Sun's orb. That is a dated transit weather. It is a season for checking the sent email, not a personality rewrite and not a reason to cancel a visa file.
One house uses a flat 8°30' for every planet. Another uses the wider Parashara-style list. A third tightens Venus and Mercury when retrograde. If Uncle in Ahmedabad and an app in Edison disagree, compare the table before you compare the uncles. Swiss Ephemeris plus Lahiri should reproduce the longitudes. The fight is then the orb list, not 'your soul.'
Combustion is also not 'the planet is in the same sign as the Sun.' A Sun at 2° Leo and a Mars at 28° Leo are the same sign and still outside most Mars orbs. Sign-sharing without the degree gap is a lazy shortcut. Compute the minutes.
Dignity and six-fold strength live on /shadbala-calculator. A tight planet-planet fight lives on /graha-yuddha. The natal stamp lives on /kundli-calculator. None of those pages should print 'dead planet.' If the birth time is weak, the Moon can move a couple of degrees; the slower planets usually keep the same combust flag. Say which body you are talking about before you argue.
A combust Atmakaraka is still a soul-significator with a heat condition, not a cursed soul. Keep that sentence on /atmakaraka. Do not import destiny-title language into a Sun-gap.
It means a planet's sidereal longitude sits inside a stated degree-span of the Sun. AskSoma treats that as a visibility and heat condition, not as a dead planet. The orb should be named on the screen.
No. Classical language is about drowned light, not cancellation of the house or the life. People with combust Mercury, Venus, or Saturn still speak, marry, and work. The rest of the chart still exists.
Yes, because they never stray far from the Sun. Frequency is why a shop that pathologises every combust Mercury is selling fear. Check the actual gap and the house, then stop.
No. War is two non-luminaries inside about 1°. Combustion is a planet versus the Sun. See /graha-yuddha for the fight flag and this page for the Sun-gap.
For slow planets, rarely. For Mercury and Venus near the edge of their orb, a timezone or city error can flip the flag. Run both candidate stamps on /kundli-calculator and keep both if they disagree.
No. AskSoma cannot guarantee a happy marriage, a job, a visa, or a child's future. A clean Sun-gap is not a promotion.
The astronomy of the gap is the same. The sign names after Lahiri may differ from a tropical app. Compute the sidereal longitudes. Do not inherit a Western conjunction slogan and paste a Vedic scare on top.
Not from fear-then-upsell. If your house wants a rite, that is household practice. The calculator's job is the degree gap. See /methodology.
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Written by Savan Vyas, founder of AskSoma.
The astrology is not written from memory: every chart position, dasha period and panchang timing AskSoma shows is computed with the Swiss Ephemeris on the Lahiri (Chitrapaksha) ayanamsa. How we calculate.