New Zealand has more stars and galaxies accessible to the naked eye than in most parts of the Northern Hemisphere. And it is no surprise that the New Zealanders have helped to advance the world’s knowledge about space and space sciences. To celebrate six of New Zealand's astronomers, cosmologists, discoverers and rocket scientists New Zealand Post has released a set of five interesting stamps. They have been topped off with a sprinkling of crushed meteorite and together form a rocket ship shape in a se-tenant strip.
The first stamp is dedicated to Beatrice Hill Tinsley, who was a world-leader in modern cosmology. She made a great contribution to understanding the Universe. The second item is devoted to Alan Gilmore and Pamela Kilmartin. They discovered 41 minor planets and established a programme for tracking near-Earth asteroids and southern comets from New Zealand. The third stamp honors Charles Gifford, who was New Zealand’s most outstanding astronomer in the first half of the 20th century.
Albert Jones, who is depicted on the fourth item, made more visual brightness estimates than anyone in history. With a telescope he built in 1948, he looked at more than 500,000 stars, and discovered two comets and a supernova. And the fifth stamp is devoted William Pickering. He launched America’s first spacecraft. He was instrumental in the success of the Apollo programme and the Voyager missions and retired to see Viking 1 on its way to Mars.
Take a look at other great space stamps.
