Shobhana is the fifth nityayoga, and its name means splendid, beautiful, or brilliant. It is classed among the auspicious yogas, favourable for undertakings connected with beauty, celebration, and shining success. Like every nityayoga it is derived from the combined longitude of Sun and Moon divided into twenty-seven equal parts, advancing as the two lights draw apart. In the panchanga it contributes its favourable quality to the reckoning of an auspicious moment, one of the five daily limbs the tradition weighs. These are the conventions of the calendar tradition, in which a benefic yoga such as Shobhana lends its splendour to the timing of a good work; the astronomical basis remains the simple arithmetic of the two luminaries' summed motion.
Shobhana and its related noun shobha, splendour or radiant beauty, belong to the vocabulary Sanskrit aesthetic theory uses for visual and poetic brilliance, related to but distinct from the rasa categories, the codified aesthetic sentiments such as the erotic, the heroic, or the peaceful, that classical Indian dramaturgy and poetics developed at length; Shobhana names the quality of shining forth rather than any one of the codified sentiments themselves. The yoga's association with celebration and shining success draws on this broader aesthetic vocabulary, and the name is also used, uncapitalized, as an ordinary adjective in modern Hindi and other Indian languages for anything judged excellent or splendid, well beyond any astrological context.