About This Stamp
The Postal Service issued a souvenir sheet featuring six individual 60-cent Probing the Vastness of Space commemorative stamps in Anaheim, California, on July 10, 2000. The stamps, designed by Richard Sheaff of Scottsdale, Arizona, are based on photographs described below. These six stamps were issued in international rate denominations and address the exploration of deep space.
The 2.4-meter optical telescope is a conceptual drawing of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope by artist Vincent Di Fate. The radio interferometer is a photograph by David Nunuk depicting the National Science Foundation's very large array on the plains of San Agustin, west of Socorro, NM. The image of the twin 10-meter optical and infrared telescopes at W.M. Keck Observatory on Manua Kea, HI, is from a photograph by David Nunuk. The optical telescopes from the National Science Foundation's Cerro Tololo Inter- American Observatory, east of La Serena, Chile, are from a photograph by Roger H. Ressmeyer. The 100-inch Hooker Optical Telescope from Mount Wilson Observatory, near Pasadena, CA, is from a photograph by John Bedke, courtesy of Huntington Library. The 302-meter radio telescope at the National Science Foundation's Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico is from a photograph by David Parker. In the selvage is a digitally enhanced image from the Hubble Space Telescope depicting the gaseous pillars in the stellar nursery known as the Eagle Nebula, courtesy of the Space Telescope Science Institute.