The European Space Agency landing the Philae craft on a comet this week gave me the the idea to show a couple of Maximum Cards with the "Europe in Space" stamps from 1991. Philae has now gone to sleep and will need sunlight to wake it up, they have rotated the solar panels and left it to fate. The craft was named after Philae a rocky island in the middle of the Nile, famous for its temple which was moved when the water of the Aswan dam was going to submerge it. Here are some other rocky outcrops but these are the mountains of the Faroe Islands with one of my favourite weather events in the high hills, a temperature inversion, when you float above the clouds with feet firmly on the ground. The stamp
shows a weather satellite and a weather map, appropriate for a place whose weather can change dramatically more than once in a day. Possibly not the best place to journey to for next year's total solar eclipse in March but then you can't look directly at it anyway, so a nice layer of cloud cover might be just the thing. That is how I viewed my last solar eclipse in the UK, through cloud. Interested in what the weather is like on the Faroes today? Go
here.
Next is a card with a map of the Faroe Islands overlaid on the night sky. I imagine they have beautifully dark skies to star gaze. The stamp cancel
has just that activity. The stamp features a Viking ship with a star map showing the North Star by which these fine navigators would steer their ships at night.
An entry to Viridian Postcard's Sunday Stamps "Anything You Wish" theme
here
6 comments:
Beautiful stamps and cards! I have never seen an eclipse (except on television).
A very apt selection. The nearest I've been to the Faroes was on the oil Floating Production Ship, Petrojarl Foinaven, West of Shetland.
Ha ha! I note in the weather stamp and map they have put the center of the low pressure system right over their islands, if my geography is correct. Weather must be stormy there a lot.
Both stamps and cards I think a treasure, so beautiful, and reminding us of the miracle of the world and beyond.
More than 20 years ago I saw an eclipse during my stay in Central America, and one thing that I remember well was the fact that animals became silent suddenly: birds stopped singing and the chicken around the house stopped walking. And they started making their sounds again as soon as the sun became visible again.
In 1999 there was a half eclipse in my country (NL), and also then the silence was amazing (be it for a shorter time as it wasn't a total eclipse then).
I've never seen a solar eclipse with animals around, so haven't been able to hear that eerie silence. The night sky up that way must be jaw droppingly wonderful. Loe the cancellation.
Very nice stamp with the constellation.
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