Description: This striking 64p (pence) denomination is an official postage stamp issued by the British Royal Mail as part of the landmark "The Scientists' Tale" series. The visual canvas features a dramatic, diagonal view of the planet Saturn and its prominent ring system, rendered in soft, false-color infrared hues of orange, blue, and green against a solid charcoal-black space backdrop. Inscribed along the right edge are the vertical text markers "Millennium 1999/17" and "Newton/Hubble Telescope," acknowledging the generational leap in space exploration tools since Sir Isaac Newton's early optical breakthroughs. A clean, matte-silver silhouette of Queen Elizabeth II anchors the top left corner, while a bold white numeric "64" balances the layout at the bottom right. Designed as part of the broader Millennium Project series, the item was precisely printed using the multi-cylinder photogravure process by The House of Questa.
Circa: 1999
Condition: MNH
Notes:
While the text explicitly honors Sir Isaac Newton's legacy in reflector telescope mechanics, the central graphic is actually built directly from a historic infrared photograph captured by the Hubble Space Telescope.