Silver Ounce 2021 Earth and Beyond - The Milky Way, Coin from Australia - detailed information

The Australian one ounce silver piece (abbreviated as 1 oz and designated with Ag for "silver") is a bullion and commemorative coin format. Uniquely, in Australia there are two mints authorised to strike legal tender: the Royal Australian Mint (which also makes the country's circulating coinage) and the Perth Mint which only makes collector and bullion coins, as well as other bullion products.

Some of these coins can be classified as "Smartminting" (or "smart minting") due to the technologies used in their production; these include irregular shapes, coloured surfaces, precious stone inserts etc. The coins are targeted at collectors who appreciated them as art rather than at bullion investors.

This coin is the fourth and final issue in the Royal Australian Mint's Earth and Beyond coin series dedicated to the planets in our solar system and the space beyond, and features the Milky Way.

The Milky Way is one of trillions of galaxies and is the galaxy that is home to our solar system with planet Earth. The spiral galaxy, which appears to the observer like a milky band in the night sky, consists of an estimated 100 to 400 billion stars and is about 13.6 billion years old. Our home galaxy has a diameter of up to 200,000 light years. Our solar system is positioned quite far out, about 26,000 light-years from the centre of the Milky Way, where dust, gas and stars are centred in the galaxy's hot, bright core. The centre, known as the bulge, is not visible by us optically due to dark clouds and interstellar matter - but it is still worth taking a look at the night sky, because with its open star clusters and dense nebulae, the Milky Way always offers the observer a breathtaking sight.