A new postage stamp features a distant galaxy with a local connection.
The University of Toledo’s Dr. Rupali Chandar is a core member of the research program that captured the image of NGC 628, a spiral galaxy 32 million light-years from Earth, using the James Webb Space Telescope.
The Spiral Galaxy Priority Mail stamp showcases NGC 628, a spiral galaxy 32 million light-years from Earth.
“Webb images are not only visually stunning, they offer important new insights into the earliest phases of star formation in spiral galaxies like the Phantom (NGC 628),” said Chandar, who studies the star formation cycle and how it impacts the host galaxies as a professor and associate chair of the Department of Physics and Astronomy. “It’s been very exciting to work with these exquisite observations and to see them celebrated and shared through the U.S. Postal Service.”
The image, described by the postal service as “breathtaking,” features blue-hued stars and red-orange swirls of dust and gas and is one of several images that Physics at High Angular resolution in Nearby GalaxieS (PHANGS) released in January 2024. PHANGS aims to advance astronomers’ understanding of the physical processes that drive star formation and galaxy evolution by completing a survey of high-resolution observations of nearby galaxies using several telescopes, including the James Webb Space Telescope that launched in late 2021.
Chandar is a long-standing member of PHANGS, under which she recently completed another observation program using the Hubble Space Telescope.
Astronomy and astrophysics are an area of research excellence at UToledo, where faculty engage with some of the most advanced terrestrial observatories and space-based telescopes in the world through the Ritter Astrophysics Research Center.
The Spiral Galaxy Priority Mail stamp is one of two new stamps that features an image captured by the James Webb Space Telescope. A Star Cluster Priority Mail Express stamp shows a star cluster approximately 1,000 light-years from Earth.
Both stamps were designed by Greg Breeding, an art director for the U.S. Postal Service.
The U.S. Postal Service encourages you to “use these stamps to send mail quickly to those in your universe all year long.” For more information or to purchase stamps online, go to the Postal Store website.
