Little old Pluto may have been downgraded as a full-sized planet (we see you over there Neil deGrasse Tyson, laughing at how the “pajamas” in our planetary mnemonic device no longer works), but NASA still has lots of love for the distant dwarf planet, which is why they included it in their beautiful new space stamps series, “Views of Our Planets,” announced today.
Following the successful passing and photographing of Pluto by the New Horizons spacecraft, which gave us the best images we’ve ever had of the very cold world with the big heart (no, it really looks like Pluto has a large, cartoon shaped heart on its surface), both the dwarf planet and the craft have been honored by NASA on new Forever stamps, though you’ll need a lot of them to successfully send a letter out there, since Pluto is over over 3.6 billion miles away from the Sun, more than 40 times further than Earth is.
Besides those two stamps, the eight full-sized planets of our solar system are also getting colorful new postage of their own, with “some of the more visually compelling historic, full-disk images of the planets obtained during the last half-century of our space exploration.” They come in a set of 16, with two of each planet.
Those really are quite stunning. I was going to say regal looking Saturn was my favorite, but it’s tough not to be mesmerized by the myriad of colors from Mercury.
These aren’t the first stamps celebrating space that NASA and the U.S. Postal Service have released (there was even a 1991 20-cent Pluto stamp placed on New Horizons), but they are some of the most beautiful.
Which stamp is your favorite? Send us your thoughts via the comments below.
Images: NASA
