[Music throughout] The Wide Field Instrument is the heart of the Nancy Grace
Roman Space Telescope. The basic design is the same as
telescopes around the world. Light enters through Roman's 2.4-meter
aperture, and is reflected and focused by the curved main mirror.
More elements tighten the beam, and strip it of stray light rays
before it passes through the filter wheel. This wheel has a
variety of filters that allow different wavelengths of light to pass through.
It spins from one to another depending on what the researcher is looking for.
FInally, the focused and filtered light reaches the focal plane,
where it creates an image on the detectors. In Roman's case,
there are 18 detectors, allowing it to create 300-million-pixel images
of large patches of the sky. This combination of image size
and detail has never been possible on a space-based telescope before,
and will make the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope an indispensible
tool in the future.