Free birth chart: your lagna, Moon sign and nakshatra

How to read your result

• Start with the lagna at the top. It is the first house, and the other houses are counted on from it.
• The planet table lists each planet with its sign, degree, nakshatra and house. The sign the Moon is in is your Moon sign, and its nakshatra is your janma nakshatra.
• D1 is your main chart. D9 (navamsa) is a second view of the same chart that tradition looks at for marriage questions.

What's in a birth chart?

A birth chart shows where each planet stood in the sky at your birth time and place. The first thing it fixes is the ascendant (lagna): the sign rising in the east at that moment, which sets the starting point for all twelve houses.

The nine grahas (Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, Saturn, Rahu and Ketu) then fall into their own signs and houses. Each house is traditionally tied to an area of life, such as career, wealth or marriage.

The nakshatra (lunar mansion) the Moon sits in at birth is your janma nakshatra, one of 27. It underlies both the classical naming convention and kundli matching.

Why does my Vedic sign differ from my Western sun sign?

Western astrology uses the tropical zodiac, tied to the seasons. Vedic astrology uses the sidereal zodiac, tied to the constellations, with an ayanamsa correction of about 24 degrees. Nakshara follows the Lahiri ayanamsa, so your rashi here can differ from a Western horoscope app, and neither is wrong.

Many people expect their Western sun sign here. Western astrology is tropical: it fixes the zodiac to the seasons, so your "sign" never changes. Vedic astrology is sidereal: it fixes the zodiac to the actual visible constellations, using an ayanamsa correction (Nakshara uses Lahiri, India's Calendar Reform Committee standard) that has drifted about 24 degrees from the tropical zodiac since ancient times. That is why a birth chart here can place you in a different rashi than a Western horoscope app does for the same birth details. Neither is wrong, they are measuring against different reference points.

Another mix-up is treating any single planet or house as the whole story. Classical Vedic astrology reads a chart as a set of relationships: a planet's sign, house, aspects from other planets, and its dignity (exalted, debilitated, or in its own sign) all modify each other. A "weak" Moon in one house can be strengthened by a well-placed aspect elsewhere, and a chart is never summarized by its single worst-looking placement.

The third is confusing your janma nakshatra with your rashi. The rashi (moon sign) is one of 12 signs; the nakshatra is one of 27 finer lunar divisions inside those signs. Both come from the same Moon position, but they answer different questions: one is used for rashifal, the other for naming conventions and kundli matching's nakshatra-based kootas.