About This Stamp
Honoring American astronomer Edwin Powell Hubble, this pane of twenty stamps consists of five images of astronomical objects—the Eagle Nebula, Ring Nebula, Lagoon Nebula, Egg Nebula, and Galaxy NGC 1316. The images are visual representations of data taken by the Hubble Space Telescope that have been processed, and in some cases colorized, for scientific research purposes.
The black-and-white photograph of Edwin Powell Hubble on the selvage was taken in 1949. He is shown posing at the 48-inch Schmidt Telescope at Palomar Observatory in California.
Stamp Art Director
Phil Jordan
Phil Jordan grew up in New Bern, North Carolina, and attended East Carolina University. After Army service in Alaska, he graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University with a degree in visual communications. He worked in advertising and in design at a trade association before joining Beveridge and Associates, Inc., where he provided art direction for corporate, institutional, and government design projects. A partner in the firm, he left after 18 years to establish his own design firm where he managed projects for USAir, NASA, McGraw-Hill, IBM, and Smithsonian Books, among others. He was Design Director of Air & Space/Smithsonian magazine for 15 years. His work appeared in numerous exhibitions and publications such as Graphis and Communications Arts. A past president of the Art Directors Club of Metropolitan Washington, he was an art director for the U.S. Postal Service from 1991 to 2014. A resident of Falls Church, Virginia, he is a retired glider pilot and a member of the Skyline Soaring Club.