NASA's upcoming
Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is a survey mission,
which means that in addition to a large,
singular field of view,
Roman can repoint that view more efficiently
during observation periods.
For one of these, called the Galactic Bulge Survey,
Roman will aim its expansive view at the center of our galaxy
and observe a two-square-degree region in infrared wavelengths
that cut through the obscuring dust to reveal millions of stars.
During this survey, Roman will take a new image
every 2 minutes for more than 62 days and then repeat this six times over
five years for a total of 400 days of coverage.
Roman will be watching for planets transiting their host stars,
and rare gravitational lensing events where the gravity of foreground objects
lenses the light of background stars.
Roman’s main objective in this survey is simply finding new planets and black holes.
Astronomers anticipate that Roman could discover over 1,000
microlensing and 100,000 transiting planets from this survey alone.
Observatories like the James Webb Space Telescope
can then follow up with a narrower, more targeted view
and learn key details about the most interesting discoveries.