Shashtiamsa (D60): the half-degree chart and your birth time

Last updated 25 October 2026

Enter your birth date, time and place to see every planet in the shashtiamsa, the sixty-part division of each sign, and the exact clock window in which your D60 Lagna holds. The notes below explain the rule, why two minutes can change the chart, and how a careful astrologer handles that.

How the shashtiamsa is found

The shashtiamsa slices every sign into sixty strips, each thirty arc-minutes wide, the finest division in the classical set of sixteen charts. The rule Parashara gives is arithmetic rather than geometric: take the degrees the planet has travelled in its sign, double them and keep the whole number, divide by twelve, add one to the remainder, then step forward that number of signs, counting the planet’s own sign as the first. Odd and even signs are treated alike, so in effect the zodiac repeats five times inside every sign, starting from the sign itself.

For example, a planet at 17°14′ of Vrishabh: doubled and rounded down, that is 34; twelve goes into 34 with 10 left over; adding one gives 11; and the 11th sign from Vrishabh is Meen. Move the planet to 17°31′, seventeen arc-minutes further on, and it lands in Mesh instead. The table at the end of the page works through these and two more cases with the calculator’s own code.

The calculator asks for the date, the clock time, the place (from the list or as decimal latitude and longitude) and the UTC offset at the place. It works in the sidereal zodiac (Lahiri ayanamsa) and draws the D60 alongside the rashi chart, with a table of each planet’s part and D60 sign.

Half a degree is about two minutes of clock time

This is the fact that governs everything else about the D60. The ascendant advances about one degree in four minutes; half a degree therefore takes it about two. A recorded time that is wrong by three or four minutes, an error that is normal on many certificates, puts the D60 Lagna in a different sign, and then every house of the chart moves too.

That is why the calculator never stays quiet about the D60 Lagna. Whenever a place is given, it states the window, to the second, during which the D60 Lagna would be the sign shown, and the signs on either side. If the window closes within the minute you entered, it says plainly that the seconds of the birth time would decide it. Without a birth time it leaves the D60 Lagna out altogether and lists, through the day, when each planet changes shashtiamsa; the Moon does so roughly once an hour.

The planets are steadier. The Sun keeps one shashtiamsa for about half a day, Mars for a day or so, and Jupiter and Saturn for days or weeks. A planet close to an edge gets its own note in the result.

Why careful astrologers want a rectified time

Because of that sensitivity, many experienced astrologers will not read D60 houses from a raw recorded time. They first rectify it: they take the dates of real events in your life and test small adjustments to the time until the dasha periods and the finer divisional charts agree with what actually happened. Only then do they treat the D60 Lagna as settled. Some will read only the planets’ D60 signs, which depend far less on the minute, and leave the D60 houses alone.

If you plan to ask about the D60, bring a list of significant dates and say how the birth time was recorded: from a hospital register, a certificate, a family horoscope or memory. An astrologer who reads a confident D60 from a time a parent remembers as “around nine” is reading more than the data can carry. Our guide on birth details for astrology covers what to gather.

What an astrologer reads from the D60

Parashara gives the shashtiamsa unusual importance. In his twenty-point scheme for weighing a planet across sixteen divisional charts it carries the largest single share, more than the birth chart itself, and the tradition links it with the deeper pattern behind a life, often described as the results of past actions. Each of the sixty parts has a name in the classical texts and is described as gentle or harsh.

In practice the D60 is used mainly to confirm and to separate. A planet that looks strong in the birth chart and also sits well in the shashtiamsa is read as dependable; one that looks strong but falls in a harsh part is read with more reserve. When two charts are nearly identical, as with twins or people born minutes apart in the same hospital, the D60 is often where an astrologer looks for the difference. It is rarely the first chart opened, and it should never be the only one.

Questions to ask your astrologer about your D60

• Have you rectified my birth time before reading the D60, and what events did you test it against?
• Are you reading the D60 houses, or only the planets’ D60 signs?
• Which named shashtiamsa does my Lagna lord fall in, and how much does that change your reading?
• If my birth time were two minutes earlier or later, what would change in what you have told me?

For help preparing questions in general, see questions to ask an astrologer.

The rule applied to four positions