How to Find Your Rising Sign

Your rising sign is the lagna, the sidereal sign on the eastern horizon at birth. Jyothish SI computes it with the Lahiri ayanamsa and Swiss Ephemeris. The birth city is geocoded. The zone offset, in minutes, is applied before the Julian day. Daylight saving changes that offset, so a birth at the same clock time can fall in a different lagna once the clocks have moved.

The sign changes about every two hours. An remembered time of around morning can be two lagnas wide. If the time is uncertain, say so. Do not pick the rising sign that flatters the question.

A birth in India uses Asia/Kolkata, UTC plus 5 hours 30 minutes, with no daylight saving, for every city. A birth in New York, Philadelphia, or Miami uses America/New_York, which does observe daylight saving. Phoenix uses America/Phoenix and does not. A Florida birth needs the city, because the peninsula is Eastern and Pensacola, in the western panhandle, is Central.

The United Kingdom uses Europe/London, and the clocks move to British Summer Time. Guessing a country zone from a state name is how rising signs go wrong. The chart needs the city.

The rising sign becomes the 1st house. Its lord is the planet that carries you. The Moon sign, which may differ, still starts the dasha through its nakshatra. People who know a tropical rising sign from a Western app often find a different sidereal lagna, because the two zodiacs are separated by the ayanamsa. The houses you are about to read are the sidereal ones.

A free account can generate the kundli from the city, the date, and the time. The rising sign is that result, not a sun-sign neighbor chosen from a list.