Nakshatra 6 of 27
Ardra
66.67° to 80° of the sidereal zodiac, ruled by Rahu — the storm that clears the air; grief and insight arriving in the same weather.
The classification
The arithmetic
The four padas
Each pada is exactly 3°20′ wide and decides the navamsa placement. Most calculators give you the nakshatra and stop — the pada is where the reading actually narrows.
How long the Moon really stays
Every source rounds this to “about a day”. Computed over 48,205 sampled positions between 2020 and 2030, the Moon spends an average of 24.54 hours in Ardra — against a mean of 24.29 hours across all 27, making this the 9th longest mansion of the cycle.
The mansions are equal in space and unequal in time, because the Moon moves faster near perigee. The ordering shifts slowly as the line of apsides rotates, on a cycle of about 8.85 years — so read this as a current figure, not a fixed property.
Reading Ardra
The traditional reading centres on the storm that clears the air; grief and insight arriving in the same weather. The symbol — A teardrop, a diamond — carries most of the interpretive weight, and the presiding deity, Rudra, the storm, sets the register in which it is read.
Its gana is Manushya, which in the classical matching system describes temperament rather than character: human — mixed, self-interested, and neither of the extremes. The yoni, Dog, is used for compatibility between two charts, where certain animal pairings are held to be hostile regardless of anything else in the reading.
Where this comes from. These attributes are recorded in the classical texts and passed down; they are traditional classifications, not observations, and no part of them has been tested. The one element with mechanical consequence is the ruler, Rahu, because it sets a 18-year dasha — and that is arithmetic you can check on the calculator.
Also ruled by Rahu
The nine rulers repeat every nine mansions, so each governs three — and each gives the same 18-year dasha.