[Music throughout]
Narrator: When it opens its eyes to our universe in the mid-2020s, the
Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, will capture images unlike any
satellite before it. The Roman Space Telescope
will have the same image resolution as Hubble, but will cover an area
100 times larger. Roman will also view the sky
in carefully selected wavelengths of infrared light which will allow it
to see through obscuring dust to reveal hidden stars and
watch the growth of galaxies over the last 10 billion years.
To see what the sky will look like to Roman,
scientists use special processing techniques to create simulated images.
In this case, they began with a Hubble mosaic
of Andromeda, one of the closest galaxies to our own.
Released in 2015, this mosaic was created out of over
400 individual Hubble images and took more than three years.
Because of its enormous coverage, Roman
will be able to create a similar mosaic with just two images, each
taking about 90 minutes. Roman Space Telescope
images are actually made of 18 separate panels, each one
corresponding to a single 16-megapixel detector. The arrangement of
these detectors creates the distinctive Roman image shape.
The simulated image is not just special because of its
size, however. It also shows Andromeda as it will appear through
Roman’s optics and infrared filters. To achieve this,
scientists started with Hubble filters that are closest to Roman's.
Then they used software to measure the positions
and brightnesses of the roughly 100 million stars in those images
and applied those as input to Roman image simulation software
which added each star back to the image after applying the expected
effects of the Roman optics, filters, and detectors.
The resulting image reveals many stars that were blocked
by dust in visible light. It highlights the Roman Space
Telescope’s role in providing a more comprehensive view of the stars in the local
universe. Roman will also use its broad view to search
for planets around other stars in our galaxy and to look for the
fingerprint of dark matter and dark energy in the distant reaches of the universe.
With an unprecedented combination of breadth and depth,
the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will open a new era
in viewing our universe.
[Explore: Solar system & beyond]
[NASA]