🌓

First Quarter Moon Emoji 🌓

Exactly half the moon is lit on the right side, the rest in shadow — that's the first-quarter-moon emoji, the phase landing about a week after new moon. It's much further along than 🌒 Waxing Crescent Moon's thin sliver, and gets used mostly by moon-phase and astrology accounts tracking exactly where the cycle stands, less often dropped into casual conversation.

What 🌓 means

Divided in half, this emoji shows the first half of the moon to be dark with dark craters and the second half (the one to the right) to be golden or bright yellow with similar colored craters.

The 🌓 First Quarter Moon emoji represents the third phase of the moon cycle. It signifies a defined amount of both darkness and light, which can also suggest a 'half-moon' as only the right side of the moon as we see from our planet is illuminated by the sun.

How and when to use it

Many times, the first quarter of the moon is called the 'half-moon', as said in the previous section. So, if you're using the same concept in daily life, suppose "We don't know the other half of the story" or something like that, you can use 🌓.
Essentially, 🌓 suggests that the other half of the moon and anything else, metaphorically, is hidden. You can also use this emoji while telling your bestie that you don't know a person or anything else completely.
🌓 can signify half knowledge as well. If you're sharing a post or a repost that aligns with this kind of knowledge, you can use this emoji in the caption. For instance, "Making headlines without proper research is like screaming that you're getting married without a ring 🌓".
And lastly, use 🌓 in the caption while posting or reposting pictures/videos of the half-moon or in other words, the first quarter moon.

Other Names

🌓 Half Moon
🌓 First Quarter of the Moon
🌓 Third Phase of the Lunar Cycle
🌓 Lunar Cycle
🌓 Phases of the Moon
🌓 Partially Lit Moon
🌓 Partly Visible Moon
🌓 First Quarter Moon Symbol

🌓 in real conversations

Why is 🌓 called 'first quarter' if half the moon is lit, not a quarter?

The name tracks time, not shape — it marks the moon a quarter of the way through its roughly 29-day cycle, seven or eight days after new moon. The disc genuinely is half-lit at that point; the fraction in the name just isn't describing the picture, which trips people up the first time they line up the word and the image.

What time of day can you actually spot 🌓 in the sky?

Afternoon and evening — a first quarter moon rises around noon and is already high in the sky by sunset, which makes it one of the easier phases to catch even before it's fully dark out. By midnight it's already gone.

🌓 or 🌗 — which one is heading toward full and which toward new?

🌓 is on the way up, growing toward a full moon about a week later. 🌗, the last quarter, is on the way down, shrinking toward the next new moon instead. Same half-lit shape, opposite direction — one lands roughly a week before full, the other roughly a week after.

The lowdown

Category: Travel & Places › sky & weather
Codepoints: U+1F313
Emoji version: Emoji 0.6
Shortcodes: :first_quarter_moon:
Keywords: first, moon, quarter, space

How it looks across platforms

Seeing a blank box instead of the emoji somewhere? Here's why that happens. Curious why the designs above don't match to begin with? Here's why that happens too.