The sun like you've never seen it before in stunning new stamps
An exciting new set of stamps has recently been released by the United States Postal Service -- and they are comin' in hot.
Just in time for the first day of summer, in conjunction with NASA, the U.S. Postal Service released "Sun Science Commemorative Forever Stamps" highlighting stunning images of the sun like many have never before seen it, and it's all in celebration of the ongoing exploration of Earth's nearest star.
Printed with a foil treatment that adds a glimmer, the stamps were designed by art director Antonio Alcalá with images from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, a spacecraft launched in February 2010 to keep a constant watch on the sun from geosynchronous orbit above the Earth.
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The U.S. Postal Service issued a set of stamps highlighting views of the sun from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory on June 18, 2021. |
As the USPS notes, the vivid colors in the images do not represent the actual colors of the sun as perceived by human eyesight. Instead, each image was painstakingly colorized by NASA according to different wavelengths that reveal or highlight specific features of the sun's activity. Yari Collado-Vega is the director of the Moon to Mars Space Weather Analysis Office. She says the colorization allows us to visualize solar activities we could never see from Earth.
"That actually helps you to see different layers of the sun within the surface and also the magnetic field and also the solar atmosphere, which is the solar corona, which is where most of the solar storms that can cause space weather effects originate from."
One of the stamps highlights sunspots. Another shows the active sun and emphasizes its magnetic fields. Two stamps show coronal holes, and two depict coronal loops. Plasma blasts are featured on another two stamps and two show different views of a solar flare.
You can view these phenomena and see the science behind each stamp here.
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USPS executive vice president Thomas J. Marshall noted the importance of the sun in a video announcing the release of the sun Science stamps.
"Since the dawn of recorded history, humans have been fascinated by the sun, its ability to provide light, heat and energy has served as a source of mystery, awe and sometimes fear," Marshall said. "At the center of our solar system, the sun's intense energy provides the precise conditions for life on Earth as we know it."
It is the modern study of heliophysics -- the study of the sun and its influence on space -- that has made great strides over our early understanding of the sun.
C. Alex Young, a scientist in NASA's Heliophysics Science Division, said what we see on these stamps commemorates the continued activity on the sun.
"If you were on part of the surface of the sun you would see all these crazy structures coming up because it's actually not this simple, smooth object," Young said. "It spits out lots of material and energy, electromagnetic fields."
Collado-Vega said that just like Earth, the sun has its own weather.
"As on Earth, you have different weather events, like, for example, you have tornadoes, you have hurricanes, you have earthquakes," Collado-Vega said. "The sun is a star and it's actually changing all the time," she continued. "Because of that it can have also different patterns and different events of weather and those, which we call solar storms happen. Those can actually travel through space and affect the Earth environment."
Some of the larger solar storms and flares can create electrical currents in the upper atmosphere which can be picked up on the ground and can even affect the power grid.
It is continued research in the field of heliophysics that holds the promise of new insights in the development of life on Earth, activity of life on other far-off stars and conditions on other planets outside our solar system.
With this release, NASA hopes the stamps will generate the same wonder and curiosity that motivated previous generations to better understand our universe, inspiring a new generation of scientists to explore even further.
"Having those stamps available to the public, they actually will intrigue a lot of those young generations to understand why there are different colors, how the sun can be viewed in all those different colors and maybe we can get more heliophysicists out there in the future," Collado-Vega said.
The Sun Science stamps are being issued as Forever stamps in panes of 20. That means they'll always be equal in value to the current First-Class Mail one-ounce price.
The new Sun Science Stamps can be purchased on the USPS website.
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