20 Dollars Pillars of Creation and Black Hole

Palau has issued commemorative silver under licensing arrangements with NASA imagery since the early 2010s, and this piece draws on the 2022 James Webb Space Telescope release of the Pillars of Creation — a region of active star formation in the Eagle Nebula roughly 6,500 light-years distant, originally photographed by Hubble in 1995. The Webb image, captured in near-infrared, revealed structural detail invisible in the earlier version and generated more public attention than any single NASA release in years.

The black hole element references the 2019 Event Horizon Telescope composite image of M87*, the first direct visual capture of a black hole's shadow.