GREENBELT, MD — The U.S. Postal Service today celebrates NASA’s continued exploration of deep space by issuing two new stamps featuring stunning images captured by the James Webb Space Telescope. A $9.85 Pillars of Creation Priority Mail stamp is being released along with a $30.45 Cosmic Cliffs Priority Mail Express stamp.
Pillars of Creation
Launched by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration on Dec. 25, 2021, the James Webb Space Telescope is the largest and most sensitive telescope ever deployed in space. Revealing the cosmos in vivid, infrared detail, it is designed to provide scientists with breathtaking images and new data.
The Priority Mail stamp features the Pillars of Creation, a trillions-of-miles-tall formation that lies 6,500 light-years away from Earth within the vast Eagle Nebula. Flush with gas and dust, the Pillars enshroud stars that are forming over many millennia. The Webb Telescope snapped this eerie image in 2022, revealing a new view of a vast stellar landscape.
Red areas toward the end of the Pillars show burgeoning stars ejecting raw materials as they form, while the relatively small red orbs scattered throughout the image show newly born stars. Some of that same material may coalesce into new planets.
Cosmic Cliffs
The Cosmic Cliffs of the Carina Nebula are a stellar nursery — a birthplace of new stars and planets. Captured in stunning detail by the Webb Telescope, the vivid image on the Priority Mail Express stamp reveals an area of powerful energy and activity within our own Milky Way galaxy.
Within the enormous swirl of the Cosmic Cliffs, radiation and solar winds emitted by newly formed stars blow gases and dust into a frenzy of creation and destruction. These particles are the active building blocks of new stars and planets.
Red and yellow flares scattered throughout the image show developing and newly born stars, while the orange and brown clouds in the lower third of the image are swirls of dust and gas. Additional stars in the Milky Way, as well as distant galaxies, appear in the blue and black regions above and beyond the nebula.
Both stamps are sold in panes of four.