Black holes were first suggested as a phenomenon in 1783 by English natural philosopher John Michell, and their behaviour was mathematically described in 1916 by the German physicist Karl Schwarzschild.

Royal Mail releases cosmic stamps to mark 200 years of Royal Astronomical Society

A new collection of stamps celebrates Britain's contribution to space exploration and astronomy.

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Iain Todd

Published: February 5, 2020 at 1:52 pm

The Royal Mail has released a set of 8 stamps to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the Royal Astronomical Society. The stamps are designed to illustrate Britain's contribution to the fields of spaceflight and astronomy, and each depicts a specific cosmic object, phenomenon or space mission.

Named Visions of the Universe, the collection features the Cat’s Eye Nebula; geysers on Saturn's icy moon Enceladus; black holes; spinning neutron stars known as pulsars; Jupiter’s aurorae; the phenomenon known as gravitational lensing; Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, which was studied by the European Rosetta mission; and the Cygnus A Galaxy.

Each has been illustrated by artist Robert Ball in collaboration with the Royal Astronomical Society, which formed on 12 January 1820.

The stamps are available from 7,000 Post Office across the UK from 11 February 2020.

Take a look at the new designs in our gallery below:

Pulsars are rapidly rotating neutron stars that emit a beam of radiation. As they spin, they send regular pulses in the direction of Earth, much like a ship at see observing a lighthouse on the coast. They were discovered in 1967 by astronomers Jocelyn Bell Burnell and Antony Hewish.
Like Earth, Jupiter has aurorae. This phenomenon is produced when charged particles emanating from the Sun interact with the planet's atmosphere. Earth’s aurorae shine in red and green visible light, but on Jupiter they shine in ultraviolet and X-ray.
Gravitational lensing was first predicted by Albert Einstein in his general theory of relativity in 1915. It occurs when light from distant, massive objects like galaxies and galaxy clusters is distorted by the mass of more closer objects. The phenomenon can be used by astronomers as a sort of cosmic magnifying glass to view objects that would otherwise be too distant.
Geysers on Saturn's icy moon Enceladus were confirmed by the UK-built magnetometer on NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. Data collected by Cassini revealed a subsurface ocean below the moon's ice crust, containing the molecular building blocks of life.
Cygnus A is an active galaxy. In the 1950s, astronomers at Jodrell Bank discovered radio emission was not coming directly from Cygnus A, but from a pair of radio lobes, one on either side of the visible galaxy. It is thought that energetic jets of particles are being accelerated away from the centre of the galaxy by strong magnetic fields.
The Cat’s Eye Nebula was discovered by William Herschel - first president of the Royal Astronomical Society - in 1786. The nebula gives astronomers a glimpse of what our own Sun may look like when it comes to the end of its life, as its wispy expanding cloud is a result of nuclear reactions weakening, allowing outer layers to drift off into space.
Black holes were first suggested as a phenomenon in 1783 by English natural philosopher John Michell, and their behaviour was mathematically described in 1916 by the German physicist Karl Schwarzschild.
Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko was the subject of the European Space Agency's Rosetta mission. The spacecraft and its Philae lander followed the comet on part of its journey around the Sun, observing changes on its surface and collecting data.

For more information about the new space stamps, visit the Royal Mail website.

Iain Todd

Science journalist

Iain Todd is BBC Sky at Night Magazine's Content Editor. He fell in love with the night sky when he caught his first glimpse of Orion, aged 10.
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