The upper pennon of Nepal’s national flag shows a crescent Moon.
Nepal’s flag is made from two joined triangular pennons rather than a rectangle. The upper section carries a stylized white crescent Moon with rays, while the lower section contains a white Sun with twelve rays. Both celestial symbols are placed on a crimson field bordered in blue.
The current flag was adopted on 16 December 1962. Civil engineer Shankar Nath Rimal standardized its construction under King Mahendra, preserving the older double-pennon tradition associated with Nepal’s ruling dynasties and Himalayan cultural history. Before modernization, the Moon and Sun were commonly drawn with human faces; those faces were removed from the present design.
A frequent error is answering “Sun” because the lower emblem is visually prominent or because the two symbols are remembered together. The position matters: Moon is in the upper pennon, and Sun is in the lower pennon. Their pairing is often interpreted as expressing permanence, with Nepal enduring as long as the Moon and Sun.