NASA’s Roman Space Telescope will combine a panoramic view of the cosmos with powerful tools for probing dark energy and hidden worlds.
NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is just one day from launch, and it is built to see the universe in a way no major space telescope has before.
Roman will combine Hubble-like sharpness with a field of view 100 times larger, allowing it to sweep across enormous regions of the sky far faster than Hubble ever could. It will hunt for distant galaxies, dark matter, dark energy, dying stars, and planets hidden in the glare of other suns.
Several University of Arizona faculty members and students will be at Cape Canaveral for the launch of NASA’s next flagship astrophysics mission after the James Webb Space Telescope. Roman’s science operations are expected to begin in January 2027.
A Much Wider View Than Hubble
Webb was designed to look deeply into relatively small regions of space. Roman’s strength will be breadth.
Both telescopes can observe infrared light, which means astronomers will be able to compare and combine their observations. Together, Roman and Webb could provide a more complete picture of the universe than either mission could produce alone.
Roman’s primary mirror measures 7.9 feet across, the same size as the Hubble Space Telescope’s mirror. But one of Roman’s instruments will give it a dramatically wider view.
The Wide Field Instrument is designed to match the sensitivity of Hubble’s cameras while imaging an area 100 times larger.
Hubble has observed roughly 0.1% of the night sky during more than 30 years in space. Roman has the potential to cover the entire sky at the same resolution.
That sweeping view should make Roman especially good at finding rare objects. Scientists expect it to capture everything from dying stars and new worlds to massive galaxy clusters.
University of Arizona researchers will help turn those observations into new discoveries.
Probing Dark Matter and Dark Energy
Among Roman’s biggest targets are two of the deepest mysteries in cosmology: dark matter and dark energy.
Dark matter does not give off light, but its gravity affects galaxies and other structures throughout the universe. Dark energy is the name scientists give to the mysterious influence associated with the accelerating expansion of the cosmos.
Together, these invisible components make up nearly all of the universe.
NASA selected the U of A’s Arizona Cosmology Lab to support two investigations aimed at understanding their nature, one involving a wide-field science team and another involving project infrastructure.
Elisabeth Krause, professor of astronomy and physics, leads the wide-field science team “Kinematic Lensing with the Roman Space Telescope.”
The team received $2 million to develop a cosmological measurement method called kinematic lensing.
By combining Roman images with spectroscopic data, the researchers hope to measure dark matter and dark energy more precisely than before.
Turning Millions of Galaxies Into Cosmology
Another U of A group will take a leading role in the multi-institutional project infrastructure team “Maximizing Cosmological Science with the Roman High Latitude Imaging Survey.”
Tim Eifler, professor of astronomy and physics, leads the working group that will interpret Roman’s cosmological data.
Roman will detect galaxies both nearby and extremely far away. Astronomers will determine where those galaxies are located and measure their properties to build enormous catalogs.
Researchers will then use computer models to translate those catalogs into information about the underlying physics of the universe.
That requires substantial computing power.
The NASA Roman Project awarded Eifler’s lab $800,000 to purchase computing resources that will become part of a new university-wide high-performance computing system expected to arrive this fall.
The lab will receive another $2.4 million over five years to carry out the research.
“This infrastructure will take us from catalogs to cosmological interpretation,” Eifler said. “We’ll be able to do things like determine how much dark energy and dark matter are in the universe.”
Eifler also serves as co-chair of the cosmology group, which brings together more than 1,000 scientists from around the world.
“It’s fantastic to rally the community and to organize us around this science case,” he said. “This really is a dream job.”
Hunting Planets Hidden in Starlight
Roman will not only map the large-scale universe. It will also test powerful new ways to directly image planets around other stars.
Its Coronagraphic Instrument uses masks, prisms, detectors, filters, and self-flexing mirrors to suppress a star’s overwhelming light.
Once that glare is reduced, astronomers can try to see the much fainter planets and disks surrounding the star.
Nearly all known exoplanets have been discovered indirectly. One common method, for example, measures the tiny drop in starlight that occurs when a planet crosses in front of its star.
Roman’s coronagraph takes a different approach by attempting to reveal the planet itself.
The instrument is expected to detect planets that are 100 million times fainter than their host stars. That represents an improvement of 100 to 1,000 times over existing space-based coronagraphs.
“It will be a crucial pathfinder for a future Habitable Worlds Observatory,” a recommended telescope that would be specifically designed to search for signs of life in other solar systems, said Schuyler Wolff, an associate research professor of astronomy leading the observation planning working group for the Coronagraph Instrument.
Preparing To Study Alien Worlds
Several other University of Arizona researchers helped develop Roman’s Coronagraph Instrument and will participate in future observations.
They include Lunar and Planetary Laboratory director Mark Marley, associate professor of astronomy Ewan S. Douglas, Steward Observatory assistant research professor Ramya Anche, and astronomy postdoctoral research associate Justin Hom.
Marley, along with LPL associate professor Ty Robinson and LPL postdoctoral research associate Zarah Brown, plans to use coronagraph data to investigate the atmospheres of worlds beyond our solar system.
Brown has been modeling the climates and spectra of self-luminous giant planets. These planets are generally so young and hot that they produce their own thermal infrared light.
Her models predict atmospheric temperature, composition and clouds, as well as the infrared spectrum each planet should emit.
Those forecasts matter because many of these objects have never been studied at these wavelengths.
“That predicted spectrum is critical for planning,” Brown said. “Roman’s coronagraph is working with extremely faint, high-contrast targets, so the team has to schedule enough observing time to detect a candidate without burning more of the mission’s limited time than necessary.”
Anche’s team is studying the structures of extrasolar systems.
Hom, meanwhile, is leading efforts to identify the best stars for calibrating the Coronagraph Instrument. He also leads precursor observing programs using ground-based telescopes, which will help confirm targets for future Roman investigations.
Science Operations Begin in January 2027
Once Roman begins science operations in January, its observations will be made available to researchers across the scientific community.
The U of A will lead nine NASA-approved investigations using Roman data, bringing in more than $2 million.
Those projects will extend well beyond dark energy and exoplanets. Researchers will also investigate supermassive black holes, gravitational lenses, galaxy formation, reionization and cosmic dust.
With its combination of Hubble-like detail and a vastly wider view, Roman is designed to find what other telescopes can easily miss, and to show astronomers how those discoveries fit into the bigger cosmic picture.
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