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What is a Nakshatra?
In short
What is a nakshatra?
A nakshatra is one of 27 divisions of the zodiac, each 13°20′ wide, traditionally the segment the Moon travels in about a day. Each is ruled by a planet and divided into four padas of 3°20′. Your janma nakshatra is the one the Moon occupied at your birth, and it sets your Vimshottari dasha sequence.
Twenty-seven mansions, four padas each
The Moon completes the zodiac in about 27.3 days, which is where the number 27 comes from: each nakshatra is roughly one day of lunar motion. Every nakshatra is subdivided into four padas of 3°20′, giving 108 padas in the full circle — the same 108 that appears throughout Indian tradition.
Nakshatras are the older layer of the system. Many classical rules — for matching, for muhurta, for naming a child — are stated in nakshatras rather than rashis, because the nakshatra locates a planet nine times more precisely.
The nakshatra lord sets the dasha
Each nakshatra is ruled by one of nine grahas, cycling in the Vimshottari order: Ketu, Venus, Sun, Moon, Mars, Rahu, Jupiter, Saturn, Mercury. That cycle repeats three times across the 27 nakshatras.
The lord of your birth nakshatra determines which mahadasha you were born into, and how much of it remained. Every subsequent period follows from there, which is why the nakshatra — not the rashi — is what a practitioner asks for first when they want to time something.