All of history is the glowing tip
Kali Yuga began in 3102 BCE. Every text ever written, every empire, the whole of the recorded past after the Mahabharata era fits inside the 1.19% already run — the bright head of ring 9, and nothing more.
A life, against the outermost ring
Eighty years is one part in 5,400 of Kali Yuga, and one part in 3.9 trillion of Brahmā's life. Drawn to scale on ring 14 it would be far narrower than a single atom.
Brahmā is exactly halfway
Fifty years done, fifty to come. We stand on the first day of the fifty-first — the Śveta-Varāha kalpa — and that day is itself 45.7% gone. It is a little past his noon.
Three new years, all real
1 January, then Ugadi at the Chaitra new moon, then Puthandu when the Sun enters Meṣa. They are marked where they fall, and they are marked in different places every year, because only one of the three is fixed to this dial.
Twelve moons do not make a year
They run 354 days against the Sun's 365, so the lunar ring slides backwards against the English one all year. Every second or third year a thirteenth month — adhika — is inserted to catch it up.
The same stars, twice
Both nakshatra rings carry the same 27 names in the same colours. The Sun takes a year to cross them; the Moon takes 27 days. A nakshatra is a patch of sky, not a length of time.
The Year view, from outside
The Year view keeps Earth still at its centre. Here Earth goes round the Sun. Look from Earth through the Sun and the stars behind it are one of the rashis: that is the Sun's sign, and it names the Tamil month.
The Moon's month
When the Moon passes between us and the Sun it is Amavasya; when it is on the far side of Earth, Purnima. Each tithi is the Moon moving another 12° round from the Sun, and thirty make the month. The lens shows where it is now.
Near and far
Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars keep close to the Sun. Jupiter is five times further out than we are and Saturn nearly ten. The drawing squeezes the distances so that all of them fit; turn on True distances to see them as they are.
Two ways things move
Through the day and night, everything rises in the east and sets in the west, the Sun and the stars alike, because the Earth turns. Press Play to watch. Night after night at the same time, the Moon is about one nakshatra further east along the planets' road. That is why the day's nakshatra changes.
The Moon keeps later hours
Because it moves east a little each day, the Moon rises about fifty minutes later every night. A full Moon is opposite the Sun, so it rises as the Sun sets. A new Moon rises and sets with the Sun, which is why it is never seen at night.
The other side of the Earth
Half the sky is always under your feet. Turn it on to see that half: at night it holds the Sun, in its rashi. By day the stars are still above you; sunlight hides them.
Star pictures with Indian names
The rashis are twelve equal slices of the planets' road, named for the star pictures on it: the scorpion is Vrischika. The nakshatras are smaller groups of one to five stars along the same road, each with its own name. Turn on Nakshatras to see them.
How to read it
Unlike the cosmic wheel, every ring here shares one clock. A direction means the same moment on all of them, so the rings can be compared — and the fact that they do not line up is the whole point. The English month, the sign the Sun is in and the lunar month all divide the same year twelve ways, and no two agree.
There are two hands, and they are the Sun and the Moon. The long one is the Sun, sweeping the outer rings once a year and ending on today's date; the short one is the Moon, crossing the dial inside once a lunar month. The gold runs from this month on the lunar ring, across the bridge, to the rim of the dial that expands it.
The inner dial is turned so that the new moon sits on the Sun. That is why every one of the thirty moons has its bright side facing the Sun's direction: the phase is not a sequence to be learnt but a consequence of where the light is coming from. Beside the Sun the Moon is dark; a quarter of the way round it is half lit; and when the two hands make one straight line through the Earth at the centre, it is full.
So a tithi is an angle, not a duration — one thirtieth of the way round from the Sun, twelve degrees of it, which is why the thirty sectors are all the same size while the days they take are not. The nakshatra ring inside carries the same twenty-seven names as the ring far outside, at the same places in the sky. Those do not move. The tithis drift across them by about a degree a day, because the Sun does.
How to read it
Every ring is one full turn of its own cycle, the way a fitness ring is one day's goal — so the rings are deliberately not comparable to each other. A day is 10−17 of Brahmā's life; drawn to scale the inner ones would vanish. True scale is the bar under each row of the key.
Containment is carried by the coloured slice instead: on each ring, the part of the current turn of the ring inside it that has already elapsed, in that inner ring's colour. One tithi is a fifteenth of the Paksha ring; one sixty-year cycle — longer than most lives — is 1/7,200 of the Kali Yuga ring, a hairline.
The four yugas run 4:3:2:1, so Kali is only the last tenth of the Mahayuga ring; and a kalpa is not fourteen equal manvantaras but an opening twilight plus fourteen, each followed by one. Read the rings from the rim inward and you have a sankalpa; read them outward and you have the cosmology.