New Things to Ask Your Assistant About the Sky

An assistant like ChatGPT is good at explaining a chart. It is not good at working one out: it has no table of where the planets were. Open Ephemeris gives it one. It computes positions from NASA's JPL DE440 ephemeris, and the assistant explains the result.

Here are new things you can ask. Use your own words; these are only examples.

1. Today's Panchang

What is today's Panchang in Mumbai? I want the tithi, nakshatra and Rahu Kaal.

You get the whole Vedic day, from sunrise to the next sunrise: every tithi, nakshatra, yoga and karana with the time it starts and ends, and Rahu Kaal, Yamaganda, Gulika and Abhijit. We checked it against Drik Panchang in four cities: every name matched and every time was within two minutes. How we checked it.

2. Your biggest transits this year

I was born on 15 July 1987 at 9:01 AM in Chicago. Rank my biggest conjunction transits in 2027.

Instead of a long date-ordered list, the transits come back ranked. Each one is scored by the planet, the aspect, the point in your chart it touches and how long it lasts. You can ask why one ranks above another; the score's parts are in the answer. The ranking works on one aspect at a time, so ask again for squares or oppositions.

3. The next supermoon

When is the next supermoon, and how close will the Moon be?

The Full Moon of 24 November 2026 is a supermoon, about 360,765 km away. The closest Full Moon of the run comes a month later, on 24 December, at about 356,738 km. You can also ask for the Moon's next perigee and apogee; those are within a second of NASA JPL Horizons.

"Supermoon" here follows the 90% rule as Fred Espenak and NASA read it, orbit by orbit.

In Claude, you can also ask

Claude reaches every calculation Open Ephemeris has. These work there today; ChatGPT gets them in a later update.

What is in the sky tonight

What can I see in the sky tonight from Lisbon, and when?

You get rise and set times for the Sun, Moon and planets, which planets are up after dark and how bright they are, close meetings between the Moon and a planet, and the Moon covering a planet or a bright star. Times are your local time. Rise and set agree with NASA JPL Horizons to within 30 seconds.

When the new crescent can be seen

When can the new crescent Moon be seen from Cairo after the next New Moon?

You get three evenings, with sunset, moonset, the best time to look, and two standard visibility tests (Yallop's and Odeh's) side by side. This is an astronomical prediction, not a religious ruling, and the answer says so. Each community decides its own month.

KP, your year ahead, and the Chinese calendar

Cast my KP chart and list the sub lord of every cusp. Born 3 March 1990, 06:15, Pune.

What is the Chinese lunar date of 6 February 2027?

What is my Almuten Figuris, and which lunar mansion is my Moon in?

Why ask your assistant and not a search engine

Because the answer is for your place and your time, and because you can keep going: "what does that tithi mean?", "which of those transits is about work?", "move it to Delhi." The numbers stay the same while the conversation moves.