When a graha comes too close to the Sun it is said to be asta - set, or combust. While Jupiter or Venus is asta, most Indian almanacs stop printing wedding muhurtas, which is why the marriage season pauses for weeks at a time. This calendar shows every asta window of the year for Jupiter, Venus, Mercury, Mars and Saturn - computed twice, under each of the two orb tables in circulation, with the gap between them stated in days.
How close to the Sun a graha must come before it counts as asta is not settled. This page computes every window twice - once with the wider orbs this app applies elsewhere, and once with the narrower set recorded in its research bank - and shows you both. Neither is averaged into the other, and neither is marked as the right one.
On Venus the two differ by three degrees, and because Venus separates from the Sun very slowly around a superior conjunction, three degrees can be more than three weeks of calendar. That is why the gap is printed as days beside every window rather than left for you to work out.
Asta means 'set'. A graha within a certain arc of the Sun rises and sets so close to it that it is lost in the glare and cannot be seen at all - Venus vanishes from the evening sky, reappears weeks later before dawn, and in between it is asta. The astrological convention keeps that name and measures the condition as an arc: if the difference in longitude between the graha and the Sun is smaller than a stated number of degrees, the graha is combust.
That is a purely geometric test, and it is what this page computes. Two things follow from it. First, no birth details are needed: combustion is a fact about the sky on a date, the same for everyone on Earth. Second, the answer depends entirely on the number of degrees you use - and that number is exactly what is not settled.
The table this app applies elsewhere - on your kundli's combustion flag and on the muhurat finders - gives Mars 17 degrees, Mercury 14 (12 when retrograde), Jupiter 11, Venus 10 (8 when retrograde), Saturn 15 and the Moon 12. It is the set most modern software uses. A search of the sources this project has consulted found no chapter and verse for it, so on this page it is labelled as untraced rather than dressed in a citation it cannot carry.
The other set is recorded in this project's research bank from the General Introduction to B. V. Raman's 1969 translation of Prasna Tantra, alongside the Tajika orbs of light: Mars 12, Mercury 8, Jupiter 9, Venus 7, Saturn 9. It is narrower on every graha. It also states nothing at all for the Moon, and gives no separate figure for a retrograde graha.
On Venus that is 7 degrees against 10, and the difference is not academic. Around a superior conjunction Venus pulls away from the Sun at roughly a quarter of a degree a day, so three degrees of orb is over three weeks of calendar. A family that has been told 'no weddings while Shukra is asta' is looking at two answers a month apart. This page prints both windows and the number of days between them, and it does not average them or name a winner - where two traditions genuinely differ, this app renders the disagreement.
A third reckoning exists and is deliberately left out. Surya Siddhanta chapter IX gives setting arcs in kalamsas, which measure when a graha becomes invisible on the horizon rather than how far it sits from the Sun along the ecliptic. That quantity depends on the graha's latitude and on the tilt of the horizon at your latitude, so it cannot be converted into a longitude orb without inventing numbers. It is a different question, honestly answered only by a true heliacal visibility calculation, which this page does not claim to do.
Jupiter and Venus are the two grahas the wedding-season rule names, and the observance is straightforward: while either is asta, the vivaha muhurta list in an almanac goes empty. This app carries the same bar on six further rites - griha pravesh, griha-arambha, upanayana, karnavedha, aksharabhyasa and seemantonnayana - and deliberately does NOT carry it on mundan or namkaran, because the chapters those two rows are built from do not state it. Because Jupiter is asta for about a month in most years and Venus for anywhere between ten days and three months depending on which side of its orbit it passes, these windows take out a large part of some years.
This is a statement about what almanacs do, not a reading of what an asta Jupiter means for a marriage. This app has not traced the observance to a specific chapter and verse in a muhurta text, and says so rather than borrowing authority from a neighbouring citation. What it can do exactly is the arithmetic: here are the windows, on both readings, to the day.
Each graha gets its own card, with Jupiter and Venus first. Every window is shown twice - once from the wider table and once from the narrower - with a bar that draws the narrower window nested inside the wider one, so you can see at a glance how much of the difference sits at the start and how much at the end.
Dates are UTC and given to the day. The underlying scan finds each crossing to within about twenty minutes, so a window that opens near midnight may read as the next date in your own timezone; when a date is that close to the line, treat the day itself as the boundary rather than the answer.
A Venus window of ten days and a Venus window of three months are two different conjunctions, not an error. What sets the length is the SPEED at which Venus crosses the orb, not the size of the orb: at an inferior conjunction it is retrograde and closes on the Sun at about one and a half degrees a day, while at a superior conjunction it creeps away at roughly a quarter of a degree a day - six times slower across nearly the same arc. You can check that on this page: the narrower table applies one figure of seven degrees to Venus whichever way it is moving, and its two windows still come out about nine days and about eight weeks.
Set the year to 2026 on the calendar above and read the Jupiter card. Two windows are shown for the same conjunction: the wider orb table opens it earlier and closes it later than the narrower one, and the difference in days is printed underneath. Jupiter is combust for about a month at a time, in almost every year - but not quite every one. Its conjunction with the Sun comes round every 399 days rather than every 365, so the date walks forward by about five weeks a year and occasionally steps over a whole calendar year: 1818, 1901 and 2079 have no Jupiter window at all, and the card says so.
Because Venus passes the Sun in two quite different ways. At an inferior conjunction it sweeps between us and the Sun while retrograde, crossing the orb quickly - about ten days. At a superior conjunction it is on the far side of the Sun and creeps away at about a quarter of a degree a day, so the same orb takes two to three months to clear. Both are shown on the Venus card.
Because the number of degrees that counts as combustion is not settled, and the two tables in circulation differ by up to three degrees. This app cannot trace its own shipped table to any classical text; the narrower set it compares against comes from the General Introduction to B. V. Raman's translation of Prasna Tantra. Rather than pick one silently, the page computes both and prints the gap in days.
That is a decision for you and whoever is fixing your muhurta, and this page will not make it for you. What it gives you is the honest picture: the days both tables agree are asta, and the days only the wider one calls asta. A date in the agreed stretch is unambiguous on either reading; a date in the disputed stretch is the one worth raising with your priest or astrologer.
No. Combustion is a fact about the position of a graha relative to the Sun on a given date, so it is the same for everyone. The only input is the year.
Not quite, and this page is careful about the difference. The tables above measure an arc of longitude between the graha and the Sun. Actual disappearance into the twilight - true heliacal setting - also depends on the graha's latitude, its brightness and the angle of your horizon, and can fall several days away from the orb date. This page computes the orb, which is what the tables state, and does not claim the visibility date.
Yes. The wider table is the one already applied on the combustion flag in your kundli and on the muhurat finders, including the vivah muhurat search, which marks the days on which Jupiter or Venus is asta. This page is where you can see the whole window rather than one flagged day.
For educational purposes. Astrological interpretations are traditional and not a substitute for professional advice.