Choghadiya in New Delhi — slot lengths, sunrise anchor and the full grid

Delhi has the widest seasonal swing of the eleven cities here: 3h 39m between its longest and shortest daylight. A daytime choghadiya runs 1h 17m in late December and 1h 45m in late June — a 28-minute difference in the same slot — and the night slots move exactly the opposite way to absorb it. Solar noon lags the clock by 21.2 minutes.

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In New Delhi, NCT, a daylight choghadiya runs 1h 17m to 1h 45m, sunrise moves 1h 52m across the year, and solar noon sits 21.2 minutes behind the clock. All three computed at 28.61°N 77.21°E.

At 28.61°N Delhi is the furthest north of the cities in this cluster, and latitude is the whole story for slot length. The further from the equator, the harder the daylight swings between the solstices, and every choghadiya boundary is a fraction of that daylight.

The practical figure is 28 minutes: that is how much longer a single daytime slot is at midsummer than at midwinter. A Delhi resident who learned that a favourable slot "lasts about an hour and a half" is right twice a year and wrong by a quarter of an hour the rest of the time.

The night is the mirror image, and it is the half that catches people out. Because day and night always sum to 24 hours, the shortest daytime slots come with the longest night slots — 1h 43m in December against 1h 15m in June.

A 28-minute difference in the same slot, and the night takes the other side of it

On 21 June, Delhi’s daylight runs 05:24 to 19:22 — 13h 58m — so each daytime choghadiya is 1h 45m. On 22 December it runs 07:10 to 17:29, just 10h 19m, and each slot has compressed to 1h 17m. Same eight names in the same order; 28 minutes shorter apiece.

The night does the reverse. June’s short night gives 1h 15m night slots; December’s long one gives 1h 43m. Anyone who plans an overnight departure against the night table in both seasons is working with grids that differ by nearly half an hour per slot, which is more than enough to move a Chal window past a train.

This is also why Delhi is the city where the "roughly 90 minutes" shorthand fails worst. It is never 90 minutes here except in passing, twice a year, on the way through.

How long one New Delhi choghadiya is, through the year

Sunrise, sunset and the resulting eighth at the year's four turning points, computed for 2026.

New Delhi sits at 28.61°N, and latitude is the only thing that sets slot length. Its daylight runs from 10h 19m on 22 December to 13h 58m on 21 June — a swing of 3h 39m — so one eighth of it moves between 1h 17m and 1h 45m. That is 27 minutes of variation in the same named slot.

Date	Sunrise	Sunset	Daylight	One day slot	One night slot
March equinox (20 March)	06:25	18:32	12h 07m	1h 31m	1h 29m
June solstice (21 June)	05:24	19:22	13h 58m	1h 45m	1h 15m
September equinox (22 September)	06:10	18:18	12h 09m	1h 31m	1h 29m
December solstice (21 December)	07:10	17:29	10h 19m	1h 17m	1h 43m

Across the whole year a New Delhi daylight slot runs 1h 17m to 1h 45m and a night slot 1h 15m to 1h 43m. At the equinoxes the two are equal — that is what an equinox is.

Where New Delhi's grid sits on the clock, and why

Sunrise in New Delhi runs from 05:23 on 10 June to 07:15 on 11 January. That is 1h 52m of movement in the first boundary of the day, and since every later boundary is measured from it, the whole grid travels the same distance.

Longitude adds a second offset that never changes. At 77.21°E, 5.29° west of the 82.5°E timezone meridian, solar noon in New Delhi falls at about 12:21 rather than 12:00 — 21.2 minutes after the clock, on every date of the year. Against 1h 45m and 1h 17m slots that is roughly a 20-to-27 per cent share of one slot, borrowed from a neighbouring city's table and never repaid.

Measure	Value
Earliest sunrise	05:23 on 10 June
Latest sunrise	07:15 on 11 January
Longest daylight	13h 58m on 21 June
Shortest daylight	10h 19m on 22 December
Annual day-length swing	3h 39m
Solar noon vs clock noon	+21.2 minutes

The full daylight grid for New Delhi on 21 June

Sunday, sunrise 05:24, sunset 19:22 — the year's longest daylight and therefore its longest slots.

13h 58m of daylight, divided by eight, gives 105 minutes a slot. Sunday is ruled by Sun, so the sequence opens on Udveg at 05:24 and closes on Udveg at 19:22 — the eighth slot repeating the first, as it does on every weekday. Of the eight, 4 are favourable.

Slot	Choghadiya	Lord	Clock time in New Delhi	Reading
1	Udveg	Sun	05:24 – 07:09	avoid for starts
2	Chal	Venus	07:09 – 08:53	favourable
3	Labh	Mercury	08:53 – 10:38	favourable
4	Amrit	Moon	10:38 – 12:23	favourable
5	Kaal	Saturn	12:23 – 14:08	avoid for starts
6	Shubh	Jupiter	14:08 – 15:52	favourable
7	Rog	Mars	15:52 – 17:37	avoid for starts
8	Udveg	Sun	17:37 – 19:22	avoid for starts

Times computed from NOAA sunrise/sunset at this city's coordinates. Rounded to the minute for display.

The same eight slots on 22 December, compressed

Tuesday, sunrise 07:10, sunset 17:29: 10h 19m of daylight, 3h 39m less than 21 June had. Each slot has shrunk to 77 minutes from 105, and sunrise itself has moved 1h 46m later.

Compare the third row of each grid and the whole argument of this page is in one line: Labh ran 08:53–10:38 in 21 June and Chal runs 09:45–11:02 in 22 December. Same city, same position in the grid, no overlap at all.

Slot	Choghadiya	Lord	Clock time in New Delhi	Reading
1	Rog	Mars	07:10 – 08:27	avoid for starts
2	Udveg	Sun	08:27 – 09:45	avoid for starts
3	Chal	Venus	09:45 – 11:02	favourable
4	Labh	Mercury	11:02 – 12:20	favourable
5	Amrit	Moon	12:20 – 13:37	favourable
6	Kaal	Saturn	13:37 – 14:54	avoid for starts
7	Shubh	Jupiter	14:54 – 16:12	favourable
8	Rog	Mars	16:12 – 17:29	avoid for starts

The night that follows 21 June in New Delhi

Sunset at 19:22 to the next sunrise is 10h 02m, so each night slot is 75 minutes — 29 minutes shorter than that same day's daylight slots, because midsummer is when the night is the compressed half. In 22 December the relationship inverts and New Delhi's night slots reach 1h 43m.

The sequence is not the day sequence continued: it starts on Shubh, ruled by Jupiter, where the daylight had started on Udveg. The slots after midnight still belong to Sunday, because the vedic day turns over at sunrise and not at 00:00.

Slot	Choghadiya	Lord	Clock time in New Delhi	Reading
1	Shubh	Jupiter	19:22 – 20:37	favourable
2	Amrit	Moon	20:37 – 21:52	favourable
3	Chal	Venus	21:52 – 23:08	favourable
4	Rog	Mars	23:08 – 00:23	avoid for starts
5	Kaal	Saturn	00:23 – 01:38	avoid for starts
6	Labh	Mercury	01:38 – 02:53	favourable
7	Udveg	Sun	02:53 – 04:09	avoid for starts
8	Shubh	Jupiter	04:09 – 05:24	favourable

Times after 24:00 are shown on the following morning's clock; the row still belongs to the previous weekday.

New Delhi against the other cities in this cluster

The two numbers that make one Indian city’s choghadiya different from another’s: how far its solar noon sits from clock noon, and how much its daylight swings across the year.

City	Solar noon vs clock	Annual day-length swing	Daylight slot range
Ahmedabad	+39.7 min	2h 50m	1h 20m – 1h 42m
Mumbai	+38.5 min	2h 18m	1h 22m – 1h 40m
New Delhi (this page)	+21.2 min	3h 39m	1h 17m – 1h 45m
Surat	+38.7 min	2h 35m	1h 21m – 1h 41m
Rajkot	+46.8 min	2h 44m	1h 21m – 1h 41m
Vadodara	+37.3 min	2h 44m	1h 21m – 1h 41m
Pune	+34.6 min	2h 14m	1h 23m – 1h 39m
Bangalore	+19.6 min	1h 32m	1h 25m – 1h 37m
Hyderabad	+16.1 min	2h 05m	1h 23m – 1h 39m
Jaipur	+26.9 min	3h 23m	1h 18m – 1h 44m
Chennai	+8.9 min	1h 33m	1h 25m – 1h 37m

A positive offset means the sun peaks after the clock says noon. All eleven cities are on one timezone, which is why the column has a 38-minute spread.

Building the grid by hand, from three numbers

Three facts produce the whole table: the weekday, the sunrise and the sunset. Nothing else is needed, and nothing else is used.

Step	Value
Sunrise and sunset	05:24 and 19:22 — 13h 58m of daylight
Divide by eight	838 ÷ 8 = 105 minutes, or 1h 45m per slot
Sunday's opener	Udveg — the choghadiya of Sun, which rules Sunday
Walk the fixed cycle	Udveg → Chal → Labh → Amrit → Kaal → Shubh → Rog → Udveg
Third boundary, as a check	05:24 + 2 × 1h 45m = 08:53

The third slot on 21 June in New Delhi is Labh, running 08:53 to 10:38, and the eighth is Udveg from 17:37. Every boundary follows from the same division, and the same three facts on any other date give that date's grid.

Use the city's own sunrise, never a neighbour's. The eleven cities in this cluster span 37.9 minutes of solar time on an identical clock.

Frequently asked

What is the choghadiya in Delhi today?

It depends on the weekday and on today’s sunrise and sunset in Delhi. This page gives the structure and the year’s real bounds — 1h 17m to 1h 45m per daylight slot — and the live table for a specific date is on the Choghadiya Today tool.

Why do Delhi’s choghadiya timings change so much through the year?

Latitude. At 28.61°N Delhi’s daylight swings 3h 39m between the solstices, more than any other city in this cluster, and every slot is one eighth of that daylight. Bangalore, at 12.97°N, swings only 1h 32m and its slots barely move.

Is Delhi’s choghadiya the same as Noida’s or Gurgaon’s?

For any practical purpose, yes. Both are within about half a degree of longitude, which is under two minutes of solar time, and at the same latitude to within a fraction of a degree. The difference is smaller than the uncertainty in what counts as sunrise over a built-up horizon.

What this page can NOT tell you

• These are geometric sunrise and sunset times at the city centre. A tradition that uses the visible sunrise over a real horizon — hills, buildings, haze — will differ, and it is not wrong to.
• The figures are computed for a fixed reference year so this page cannot go stale on the shelf. Sunrise repeats to within seconds across years, so they hold; they are still not a substitute for looking up an actual date.
• Choghadiya carries no personal component. Your chart, dasha and transits are absent from every number here, and two people in this city read exactly the same table.
• The favourable / avoid labels are conventional and they do not predict outcomes. They rank a preference between otherwise equal moments, which is a much smaller claim than the word "auspicious" usually carries.
• Delhi’s winter sunrise is routinely invisible through fog for weeks at a time. The computed time is the geometric one; if your tradition uses the visible sunrise, December and January will not agree with this page and the tradition is not wrong.

Choghadiya is a folk-electional convention, not a prediction. It labels slices of the day by tradition; it does not know what you are doing, who you are, or how it turned out. Treat a label as a preference, and never as permission or prohibition.

How AskSoma computes and what we refuse to claim · Engine: NOAA solar position (sunrise/sunset), ±1 minute against published almanac times · Ayanamsa: not used — choghadiya is a sunrise-to-sunset division, with no sidereal component · Content reviewed 2026-08-08