A new NASA project, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, is scheduled to launch in May 2027. It was named in honor of the American astronomer who was one of the first female managers of the US space agency.
In a scientific paper, a group of astronomers detailed the benefits of using Roman to perform extensive and precise mapping of the Milky Way with unprecedented depth and breadth.
The result would be an unprecedented mapping of the stars, surpassing all past observations combined. “There is a wide range of science that we can explore with this type of study, from the formation and evolution of stars to interstellar dust and the dynamics of the heart of the galaxy,” said Catherine Zucker, an astrophysicist at the Harvard & Smithsonian Center. for astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass.
As NASA explained in a press release, the idea for this study came from the possibility that the scientific community had to design different types of studies to determine which ones to conduct with the new telescope. Most voted of all Milky Way mappings. This is one of three major community studies, which also include the Galactic Bulb Time Domain Study and the High Latitude Time Domain Study.
The amount of area to be studied and the number of filters to be used to map it need to be defined. Astronomers will have to decide on a compromise between the two, because the possibilities, while wider than ever, are not endless.
“Scientists say that if it covered about 1,000 square degrees (an area of the sky the size of 5,000 full moons), it could reveal more than 100 billion cosmic objects (mostly stars),” NASA said in a statement. They added that “astronomers around the world will have the opportunity to leverage Romano and design cutting-edge research that will allow the astronomical community to harness the full potential of Romano’s capabilities to perform extraordinary science.”
Roberta Paladini, a senior researcher at Caltech/IPAC in Pasadena, Calif., and the project’s lead author, explains that with the capacity of this telescope, it would take about one month to count the stars. Whereas with the current telescopes, Hubble and James Webb, the same process would take decades.
A hidden part of the galaxy
The Milky Way is a spiral galaxy with a black hole at its center, Sagittarius A*. It has a “stripe” of bright stars criss-crossing it from side to side, and arms appear at either end to give it its spiral appearance.
All of these features have been observed by other observatories, such as NASA’s retired Spitzer Space Telescope, but with limitations. Therefore, Zucker explained, “we have a very incomplete view of what the other half of this Milky Way looks like beyond the galactic center.” But astronomers are sure that Roman will be able to capture details that are imperceptible to other telescopes.
The data Roman can process includes the study of individual stars and the subsequent creation of a star catalog. Similar missions have already been carried out, such as ESA’s (European Space Agency) Gaia, which mapped around 1 billion stars in 3D within 10,000 light-years, but the new telescope will be able to see up to ten times further. “Roman could map up to 100 billion stars 100,000 light-years away or more (extending to the outermost edge of our galaxy and beyond),” according to NASA.
What will Roman’s abilities be like?
Getting a complete view of the galaxy is difficult for several reasons. One of them is its size. It takes up a lot of space in the sky and is full of cosmic dust that blocks out the starlight.
The new Roman telescope, which is still under development, may overcome these difficulties and be able to complete its missions thanks to the technology it contains. NASA said the project will have an impressive arsenal of capabilities: “The large field of view, sharp resolution and ability to see through dust make it an ideal tool for studying the Milky Way. And seeing stars in different wavelengths of light, optical and infrared, will help astronomers learn things like star temperatures. This information unlocks much more data, from the evolutionary stage and composition of the star to its luminosity and size.”
This will be possible in part thanks to the Coronagraph technology demonstration. This coronagraph is “a system of masks, prisms, detectors and even self-bending mirrors designed to block the brightness of distant stars and reveal planets orbiting them to show that direct imaging technologies can work even better in space than they do on Earth.” telescopes.” If the test run during the first 18 months of Roman’s mission is successful, the instrument could be made available to the entire scientific community in future projects.
With this space telescope, it will be possible to discover hidden regions of the galaxy, as well as obtain more precise data than ever about star systems.
