2025 Star Cluster IC 348 $31.40 Stamps — Astronomy Collection, Priority Mail Express (Not a Forever Stamp)

Please note: this is a $31.40 Priority Mail Express® denominated stamp, not a Forever Stamp. Pending favorable review by the Postal Regulatory Commission, it is denominated at the new Priority Mail Express Flat Rate Envelope rate.

The object

Star cluster IC 348 sits about 1,000 light-years away in the constellation Perseus. NASA's James Webb Space Telescope imaged it in 2022, and what it found bears directly on how stars and planetary systems get started.

Reading the image

Stellar material recorded through Webb's infrared filters falls across the frame in pink, purple and white sheets, lit by the cluster's own stars — a reflection nebula.

Buried in that dust are three free-floating brown dwarfs: too small to ignite as stars, too large to be planets. None exceeds eight Jupiter masses, and the smallest is only three or four. They read as relatively bright in infrared because the cluster is young — roughly 5 million years — and they are still glowing with the heat of their own formation.

Credits and format

Art director Greg Breeding designed the stamp from an image credited to NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Kevin Luhman of Penn State University, and Catarina Alves de Oliveira of ESA. Issued in a pane of four.

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