USA 2007 – International Polar Year
The United States issued this souvenir sheet in February 2007 to commemorate the
start of International Polar Year 2007–08, a collaborative scientific study of the Earth’s polar regions which actually ran from March 2007 to March 2009. The two
self-adhesive stamps depict an aurora borealis and aurora australis.
The aurora borealis picture (top stamp) shows the northern lights over the
Talkeetna Mountains in Alaska and was taken by Fred Hirschmann of Wasilla,
Alaska, in January 2005. The aurora australis picture was taken by Per-Andre Hoffmann of Germany in the Bellingshausen Sea along the west side of the Antarctic
Peninsula in March 2004. The image on the surrounding sheet shows an aurora
over Mt McKinley in Alaska and was taken by Colin Tyler Bogucki of Minneapolis.
The stamps bore a face value of 84c for international postage. In October 2007
they were reissued with a revised face value of 41c for inland postage.
The Stanley Gibbons catalogue assigns a number to the mini sheet only, and not
the individual stamps. However, the designs that were reissued later in 2007
with a face value of 41c are numbered SG 4788 and 4789.
|
|
||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
 |
|
|||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |||||||||