The seven visible grahas and the two nodes
The seven visible grahas are the Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus and Saturn: the bodies that can be seen with the eye or a simple instrument, and that the ancient astronomers tracked.
What it is
Their Sanskrit names are Surya, Chandra, Mangal, Budha, Guru, Shukra and Shani. The Sun and Moon are the two luminaries; the other five are the planets in the strict sense of the word.
How it is worked out or read
Listed by distance from the Earth, the order is Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn. The weekday order is a separate scheme, described in the vara article.
Where it appears on this site
The seven grahas are computed for every chart on this site. Their positions are in the birth chart.
The seven and the two
Classical Jyotish uses nine grahas. Seven of them, the Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus and Saturn, are bodies that anyone can see in the sky without a telescope. The other two, Rahu and Ketu, are not bodies at all but the two points where the Moon's path crosses the Sun's path. The texts call them chaya grahas, shadow planets, because eclipses happen when the Sun and Moon are near them. Together the nine make up the navagraha worshipped in temples across India.
Seeing them in the sky
Venus is the brightest object in the night sky after the Moon and is seen as the morning or evening star, never far from the Sun. Jupiter is the next brightest planet, a steady white light that can be seen high in the sky at midnight for months. Mars has a clear reddish colour and varies greatly in brightness, being brightest near opposition every two years or so. Saturn is a steady, yellowish light, fainter than Jupiter. Mercury is the hardest to see, appearing only low in the twilight shortly after sunset or before sunrise, near its greatest elongations.
Watching them for a few weeks shows their different speeds directly: the Moon changes position night by night, Venus and Mars over weeks, Jupiter and Saturn barely at all.
The order of the weekdays
The seven visible grahas give their names to the seven weekdays: Ravivara for the Sun, Somavara for the Moon, Mangalavara for Mars, Budhavara for Mercury, Guruvara for Jupiter, Shukravara for Venus and Shanivara for Saturn. The order of the weekdays is not the order of the planets in the sky. It comes from the system of horas, in which each hour of the day is ruled by a graha in the order of their periods, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon. Counting twenty-four hours from the first hora of one day lands on the ruler of the next day, which produces the familiar weekday sequence.
The outer planets
Uranus, Neptune and Pluto cannot be seen without optical aid, or in Uranus's case only with great difficulty, and they were discovered in modern times. Classical Jyotish does not use them, and the texts' system of rulerships, dignities and dashas is built on the seven visible grahas and the two nodes. Some modern practitioners add the outer planets to charts, but this site follows the classical nine.
Why visibility mattered
The emphasis on visible bodies reflects the tradition's roots in observation. Early astronomers watched the grahas move against the nakshatras, timed their risings and settings, and noticed when they disappeared into the Sun's glare. Combustion, or asta, is the textual memory of that disappearance. Knowing what the grahas look like in the sky makes the tradition's ideas more concrete.