New moon’s seen first, under gold stars (5)
I believe the answer is:
orion
'stars' is the definition.
(Orion is a constellation)
'new moon's seen first under gold' is the wordplay.
'new' becomes 'n' (common abbreviation eg NT for New Testament).
'moon's seen' becomes 'io' (I am not sure about this - if you are sure you should believe this answer much more).
'first' says to put letters next to each other.
'under' means one lot of letters go next to another (in a down clue, some letters go below others).
'gold' becomes 'or' ('or' is the heraldic name for gold).
'n' after 'io' is 'ion'.
'ion' put after 'or' is 'ORION'.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for orion that I've seen before include "Rigel constellation" , "He hunted" , "Constellation - mythological hunter" , "Mythical Greek hunter turned into constellation" , "Constellation on the celestial equator -- giant hunter of Greek mythology" .)