NASA is still a few years away from launching the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, but a new study explores what this groundbreaking space observatory will be able to do. Unlike the Hubble and James Webb space telescopes, which zero in on small patches of the sky, the Roman Telescope will be designed to take a wider view of the cosmos. According to the researchers, it would take Hubble decades to see what Roman will be able to see in a few months.
The Roman Telescope passed a critical design review in 2021 and is currently under construction at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center with the aim of launching it aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket in 2027. When complete, it will have two instruments: a coronagraph for visualizing exoplanets and a wide-field camera with a 300.8-megapixel resolution. It’s the latter that will allow the Roman Telescope, which will use a 2.4-meter mirror similar to Hubble, to perform both wide and deep sky surveys.
(Credit: NASA)
Since the telescope is still being built, researchers at Goddard created a simulation to estimate the telescope’s capabilities. Using the current gold standard model of galaxy formation, the team created a simulated sky of five million galaxies. When the telescope launches, scientists will be able to compare the real data with simulations to determine how close our current theories match reality.
Our current understanding of the universe holds that galaxies form in clusters along invisible dark matter filaments. We can only detect these threads by their gravitational effects on visible matter. Looking far away into the distant past, we can see how galaxies began popping up at the intersections of dark matter filaments, and the Roman Telescope’s extremely wide field is ideal for that. NASA compares it with the depth of the original Hubble Deep Field but covering a huge swath of the sky. The image above shows the areas Hubble (the white box) and Roman (a yellow box) can capture in a single exposure of the simulated sky.
A render of the finished Roman Telescope. (Credit: NASA)
It’s not just the field of view that will make Roman a sky-scanning machine. The rest of the spacecraft is being designed to accelerate observations. It has a rigid structure, with potentially wobbly structures like the solar panels tamped down. That means Roman will be able to reorient quickly and capture data without vibrations spoiling the images.
“Roman will take around 100,000 pictures every year,” said Jeffrey Kruk, a research astrophysicist at Goddard. “Given Roman’s larger field of view, it would take longer than our lifetimes even for powerful telescopes like Hubble or Webb to cover as much sky.” Specifically, the study says it would take Hubble 85 years to do what Roman will do in 63 days. However, Roman won’t be ideal for precision observations of specific objects. Webb and Hubble will still be vital for that kind of work, but Roman can help nail down observational targets that could solve long-standing mysteries about galactic evolution.
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