A University of Wyoming professor helped take an image of a galaxy that's ended up in an unexpected place: a new U.S. Postal Service stamp. The stamp was officially released on Jan. 21 and is priced at the Priority Mail Flat Rate Envelope rate: about $10.

The stamp features an image of a spiral-shaped galaxy that's swirling about 32 million light-years away from Earth in the constellation Pisces. According to UW physics and astronomy professor Danny Dale, that's pretty local in space terms.

" A lot of astronomers study galaxies at the far edges of the universe, but we don't have the ability to disentangle fine detail like we can in the closest galaxies," he said. "It's just beautiful to study these nearby galaxies."

Dale has been at UW for 24 years and has been studying close-to-home galaxies with various telescopes that whole time. He worked as part of a team of more than a hundred people to capture the image going on the stamp using NASA's James Webb Space Telescope.

" Space-based telescopes provide the best images because you're above the blurring effects of the earth's atmosphere," he said. "We just get nicer and juicier and more beautiful images."

Getting a better understanding of those nearby clusters of stars, gas and dust helps scientists understand how those galaxies evolve over time, which can also provide insight into the stories of galaxies in the farther reaches of the cosmos. This specific cluster of stars and gas and dust is known as NGC 628 and is also referred to as the "Phantom Galaxy."

" It's kind of a silly name, but a lot of these galaxies that are in the local universe have fun names like that," said Dale.

Dale is also an associate dean in the university's College of Engineering and Physical Sciences. His role in these kinds of imaging projects involves designing observations, or computer code, that get sent up to the space telescope from a transmitting station down on Earth.

But Dale said his role in bringing that far-away place back to our galaxy isn't quite as glamorous as one might think.

" It's not like I was sitting in my smoking coat with a pipe at some mountain top observatory and pondering the cosmos and taking data," he said. "It was me pecking away at the keyboard in my office during the daytime, and then it gets sent up to the telescope ."

All imagery created from space telescope data is freely available to the scientific community and the public alike. Because of that open access, Dale said it's not uncommon to see the images pop up in unexpected places. But hearing from the USPS was a bit of a surprise.

"Seeing it tucked away in commercials is something we've seen multiple times, but we were not expecting a stamp," he said.

Dale hopes the stamp might prompt more people - young and old - to get more curious about the world around them.

"Sometimes we say astronomy is like the gateway drug to STEM careers [science, technology, engineering and math] in general. So maybe dinosaurs or planets get you excited when you're 5 years old, and then maybe you'll latch onto that excitement," he said.

Dale said mentorship is a huge part of his work, whether that be running an astronomy camp for middle schoolers or leading a 10-week-long internship program at UW every summer. The new stamp, he said, is part of that bigger mission.

"I absolutely hope that this can inspire people to follow their passions or their dreams if that's something that interests them," he said.