Osterreich - 20 Euro silver, SECRETS OF SNOW, 2023

German astronomer and mathematician Johannes Kepler (1571–1630) pondered this with childlike curiosity when snow began to fall as he was walking across Charles Bridge in Prague in 1610. This experience prompted him to write the first scientific treatise on snow crystals, Strena Seu De Nive Sexangula, in which he asks why when snowflakes fall, although each one is different from the next, they are always hexagonal in shape. The life of a snowflake may seem inconsequential, but Secrets of Snow turns it into something momentous. The obverse of the coin features a magnification of a snow crystal with an ice-blue gemstone in its centre and polished edges. A young woman is shown in profile on the coin’s reverse. A manifestation of winter, she is a snow princess adorned in a crown and a cloak, both decorated with snow crystals. The background is partially polished around her crown and on the lower right-hand side.