What are the differences between the Golden Ship and the standard ship?
Solution 1:
It's golden, and gives off a power-up like glow that pulses with the music. This helps quite a bit with keeping track of the ship's location, because none of the enemies fall into that color scheme.
It looks different, apart from the color. It's a bit bigger.
The turrets are a bit farther apart.
Solution 2:
The differences appear to simply be cosmetic.
Though, arguably, the three spotlights shooting out from the Golden Ship might make it a tad easier to keep track of your screen when you're in the middle of a kaleidoscopic explosion cascade.