2009 Auspicious Times
Please follow this link.
auspicious times (nakath) for the sinhalese and tamil new year for 2008 are listed bellow. you might also want to check the (celestial) skymaps for 13 april and 14 april. notice that the sun is still in pisces and that the sun moves to aries only on 18 april. i guess the astrologers still havent updated their skymaps. the skymaps i obtained are from stellarium ver 0.95.
you might also want to read a blog post about last year's new year being off!
Sunday 13 April 2008
- 12:04 - 18:53 :- පුන්ය කාලය - sun's transition from constellation pieces (මීන) to aries (මේශ)
- 18:54 :- ignition!!! start cooking!!! time to cook. dress color theme: red and yellow. orientation: south.
- 20:10 :- start eating!!!
Monday 14 April 2008
- 07:42 :- හිස තෙල් ගෑම. apply some hair cream if you cant find oil.
skymaps
discussion thread from a previous blog post
Kulendra Janaka said... [April 16, 2007 4:09 PM]
Are the astrologers using the same boundaries the Astronomical Union have decided on? The boundaries we currently have in astronomy were defined in 1875. Im not very sure if the astrologers use the same boundaries. I know for a fact that the 28 'nakath's are equally spaced.
Can you check where the sun is, on the so called awurudu udawa?
shehal said... [April 16, 2007 4:46 PM]
did you check the April 14-17 images?? the Sun is inside the polygon connecting the stars (of Pisces)
Kulendra Janaka said... [April 16, 2007 6:07 PM]
mm yes, thats wat I meant. That polygon was drawn by International Astronomical Union in 1930 (correction to my previous comment)and used the epoch of 1857 for desginating positions. The reason was that people were starting to come up with random constellations with borrowed stars from here and there. From there onwards, any part of the observable space belonged to any of the 88 constellations.
So what Im asking is whether the sinhala/hindu astrological system was based on teh same definition of constellations we have now. Obviously not. And to correct one of my previous comments again, the 27 nakaths are equally spaced with the 28th used by hinds to compensate the additional 'bit'. Im trying to find where Mesha starts in Sinhala/hindu astrology. So according to their deifinition, it might be the right point.
Ok two typos in the above comment, its 1875 not 1857 :) and the line that goes as '28th used by hinds to ' should read as '28th used by hindus to ' :) Sorry for littering up the blog :)
shehal said... [April 16, 2007 6:43 PM]
no worries... your comments are appreciated... oh my astronomy!!!! there are two mishaps made by astrologers????
a. they are using their own ancient star charts
b. they are drawing up their own constellations
Kulendra Janaka said... [April 16, 2007 7:19 PM]
LOL. No :)
See what we refer to as a constellation, is ,(even in astroNOMY) a method to specify the placement in general terms. To specifically state where an object is, you use a coordinate system. Its like having country boarders or district boarders and longitude/lattitude. So I believe that you will agree, as far as placement and identification goes, its the coordinate that matter.
The reason for dividing the sky into 88 constellations, and then drawing the borders, is because, people started spotting random patterns and naming them a new. To stop this IAU published the borders that are present in current star maps. This has NOTHING scientific in it. It took into account the general area of the constellation, already made refernces to the stars in the area, and proximity to the main group of the constellation. (And Im sure a few other factors. If you want more details, try googling for constellation, boundaries, Delporte) It was just a convention. Imagine that you got this piece of land which belonged to no body, and people have been calling different areas different names, and you decide, ok this is where the boundry would be, this is how it is subdivided.
Thats why we need to fnd the absolute position (in coordinates) of thepoint which astrologers refer to as Mesha (i.e. Aries). Otherwise its talking in two different conventions.
shehal said... [April 16, 2007 8:14 PM]
my bro tells me that the united astrologers union of sri lanka agrees that their calculations are not accurate because their charts are old etc.... and to make 13th and 14th the new year they calculate an auspicious time...
so awrudu is no longer the instance where the Sun crosses from Pisces to Aries!
also the other auspicious times they come up with are also based on the old charts and they really dont care where the actual planet is...
so its more a tradition than an actual power or a force (or something to do with spacetime)
Kulendra Janaka said... [April 16, 2007 9:02 PM]
Could be. But itd be nice if its possible to find out what their reference is and then show that what they say is wrong.
Anonymous said... [April 17, 2007 7:12 AM]
kulendra,
That's a good point ..you are right - Aries is not Mesha. According to what I just checked, it appears Aries maps roughly to Mesha. However, I think it doesn't look like the sun is within Mesha (as per the definition of Mesha ..which is not exactly well documented ..also I haven't compared properly).
Is it within Meena? I have no idea .. since apparently nobody really knows where the heck Meena is (other than it's roughly Pisces). Of course, there are probably people who will claim they know where Meena is though.
References:
http://www.vedicastronomy.net/stars_appendix.htm
http://www.vedicastronomy.net/stars_mesha.htm
http://www.vedicastronomy.net/stars_meena.htm