I Found It - The Spiral Galaxy Coin

Shane6596

Was looking for a few weeks and found a seller overseas that had it. Mintage of 2015 pieces. It was fun doing the hunt.

I do amateur astronomy and i like coins so this was something i had to have when i saw it. The picture is of galaxy NGC 1232. Its 100 million light years from earth. The picture was taken in 1998 by one of the first VLT scopes. Ive seen it in my 12" scope, but it looks nothing like the picture, more of a faint fuzzy patch of light with specs. But thats normal when viewing.

Pics like this are many frames over time stacked onto each other to make detail and color.

Anyways, im rambling...heres some pics:

Shane6596

Heres the galaxy itself from a series of stacked images.

TomB

It seems like this coin was tailor-made to be marketed in conjunction with NGC certification!

124Spider

Oops

rhedden

One of the first astrophotos I ever made when I started in 2012 was the rather rarely photographed galaxy NGC 1232, which is depicted on this coin. It was a black & white image, and I never finished the RGB data collection due to winter weather (I chickened out). You mean I can now get a color version in coin form?

Shane6596

Its cool to see some astro guys here...nice pics.

There are alot of galaxy, planet coins. I found quite a few once i started searching for them.

rhedden

NGC 1232 is a galaxy in the southerly constellation Eridanus. It was within reach from my location in Texas back in 2012, but it's fairly low over the horizon from the northeastern US, and therefore difficult to photograph for many of us. It's smaller and fainter than the galaxy M101 pictured above.

I wondered why they chose this particular galaxy for the coin when many more famous ones are available. The latitude of Niue Island (19 deg. south) is not far from the declination of NGC 1232 (20 degrees south), which means it passes nearly straight overhead from Niue Island. Coincidence?

Shane6596

@rhedden said:
The latitude of Niue Island (19 deg. south) is not far from the declination of NGC 1232 (20 degrees south), which means it passes nearly straight overhead from Niue Island. Coincidence?

That is interesting, i learned something new

CoffeeTime

I didn’t know they made that. Thanks for sharing

silverpop

coin

jmlanzaf

There's so much fun NCLT out there. It's a shame the "purists" rail against it.

ricko

Nice coin. I enjoy these NCLT coins and have a few that attracted me at the time. No galaxy coins. It is a hobby, collect what you like... and fortunately, there are coins of all types, for all interests. Cheers, RickO

The_Dinosaur_Man

Love the coin, and fellow casual astronomer here. It's fun to note that all of the atoms that make up our silver and gold coins were born in a supernova explosion in the distant past. All of our coins are made of star stuff.

rhedden

@The_Dinosaur_Man said:
Love the coin, and fellow casual astronomer here. It's fun to note that all of the atoms that make up our silver and gold coins were born in a supernova explosion in the distant past. All of our coins are made of star stuff.

Most of them are astronomically priced, too.

Jzyskowski1

@The_Dinosaur_Man said:
Love the coin, and fellow casual astronomer here. It's fun to note that all of the atoms that make up our silver and gold coins were born in a supernova explosion in the distant past. All of our coins are made of star stuff.

And the star stuff became these. One of my favorite coins.

GoldFinger1969

I wonder if any dealers will be selling these at our Space Expo, NEAF.

WillieBoyd2

I wonder what Britain's Queen Elizabeth thought of all of the coins with her picture on them.

Coins with reverses including pictures of dinosaurs, pirate ships, and now galaxies.

yosclimber

One of my half dime collaborators works at the Space Science Telescope Institute -
the folks that set up and run the James Webb Space Telescope.
State of the art for cool astronomy photos these days!

Shane6596

@yosclimber said:
One of my half dime collaborators works at the Space Science Telescope Institute -
the folks that set up and run the James Webb Space Telescope.
State of the art for cool astronomy photos these days!

That is very cool! Ive seen most of the Webb images, spectacular. That scope is opening up alot to study.

Shane6596

@Jzyskowski1 said:

@The_Dinosaur_Man said:
Love the coin, and fellow casual astronomer here. It's fun to note that all of the atoms that make up our silver and gold coins were born in a supernova explosion in the distant past. All of our coins are made of star stuff.

And the star stuff became these. One of my favorite coins.

Very nice!! In my line of work i deal with elements on the periodic table. I might have to search for that coin.