Vatican

2009

Commemorative coin

International Year of Astronomy

Official Journal of the European Union

The inner part of the coin depicts an allegory of the birth of the stars and planets together with several astronomical instruments. The mint mark ‘R’ is situated in the bottom left quadrant and the year ‘2009’ is at the bottom. The design is surrounded on the bottom left-hand side by the legend ‘ANNO INTERNAZIONALE DELL’ASTRONOMIA’ and on the top right-hand side by the name of the issuing country, ‘CITTÀ DEL VATICANO’. The coin’s outer ring depicts the 12 stars of the European flag.

Additional information

The coin depicts an astrolabe, which can be used to simulate the rotating sky and to calculate the positions of stars. It is divided into four quadrants. The first quadrant (top right) shows the creation of the sun and the moon after the ceiling fresco painted by Michelangelo (1475-1564) around 1510, depicting the creation of the sun, the moon and the plants in the Sistine Chapel. In the 2nd quadrant (upper left) the two telescopes (90 and 130 cm long respectively) built by the polymath Galileo Galilei in 1609 are shown, today in the Museo Galileo in Florence. In the 3rd quadrant (below left) the mint mark "R" is shown below the astrolabe hand, in the 4th quadrant (below right) a reflecting telescope. Below it a sun with a halo, a crescent moon, planets and stars are shown.

Edge lettering

Designer