NASA's Roman Space Telescope is 100x More Powerful Than Hubble

 

Our universe is constantly expanding and so is our hunger to explore it the James Webb Space Telescope is up in space

 already and expanding our horizons

 but as always humanity isn't satisfied and we want to find more possible homes of life in outer space welcome to Science Reads and today let's find out how the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will revolutionize astronomy and help us discover a hundred thousand new exoplanets some of you might be thinking why do we need another space telescope right now

 didn't we just launch the James Webb telescope into space well first it's not uncommon to have multiple telescopes in earth's orbit or further out into space because no telescope can be a one-size-fits-all solution in order to get astronomical data about different wavelengths scientists have to use several different types of telescopes no single telescope can detect every sort of wavelength as different wavelengths on the electromagnetic spectrum require different techniques to be detected moreover the nancy grace roman space telescope is a Hubble-sized telescope that will revolutionize astronomy by building on the scientific discoveries and technological leaps of the Hubble and James Webb Space Telescopes currently planning for an observatory launch in late 2026 Roman will provide a panoramic field of view that is a hundred times greater than Hubble leading to the first wide field maps of the universe at space-based resolution unlike the Webb telescope that offers superior sensitivity over Hubble roman's unique ability to do wide field surveys at space-based resolution will enable a very ambitious science program originally referred to as the wide field infrared space telescope or wfirst nasa renamed the mission in 2020 after Nancy Grace Roman NASA's first Chief Astronomer who passed away in 2018.

 what lady would take mathematics instead of latin roman was responsible for setting up a committee of astronomers and engineers in the 1960s to envision how in-space telescopes could revolutionize scientific research these very efforts eventually led to the Hubble space telescope naming this telescope after her is a very appropriate way to celebrate her life NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will not only create enormous cosmic panoramas but will also help us answer questions about the evolution of our universe and find hundreds and thousands of planets thirty years ago exoplanets were the stuff of myths for us we couldn't say for sure if most of the stars in our galaxy had their own planetary systems or if the sun was a very special star but thanks to the Kepler Space Telescope and others that followed we're now aware of at least 4 000 exoplanets in our galaxy and our site has reached neighboring galaxies as well in search of intergalactic planets Kepler found mostly large planets around dim stars TESS NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite builds on Kepler's survey work by hunting for smaller planets around brighter stars but with the roman space telescope we can hope to complete our initial galactic census of exoplanets as this telescope can potentially search for smaller planets including those

 which can be earth-sized rocky worlds

 nasa nasa's also hoping to find earth-like planets that could support life as we know it in a five-year mission the Roman Space Telescope is expected to survey 100 million stars and find 2,500 new exoplanets it's predictable that many of these exoplanets will be rocky earth-sized worlds RST will also use a light blocking disc called a coronagraph to directly image

 selected planets uncovering these world's compositions for the very first time

 the telescope will search for exoplanets using an extraordinary technique called microlensing you can think of microlensing as Einstein's magnifying glass planets stars and galaxies have such immense gravity fields that they can actually bend and magnify the light from other objects behind them producing dramatic halos in space when a star crosses in front of another as seen from earth the light from the background star is bent and magnified around the foreground star if that foreground star has planets around it it will bend and magnify the background starlight further producing spikes in the amount of light we see from earth scientists will examine survey images from the RST to look for these microlensing events allowing them to detect even small rocky exoplanets RST's camera is just as sensitive as the Hubble Space Telescopes but with a field of view a hundred times bigger that means no matter what rst is looking at it'll be able to collect a lot more data at one time for example the image you're looking at right now was obtained through one of the largest Hubble programs ever carried out the pan chromatic Hubble andromeda treasury program this image shows an incredible high-resolution view of our nearest galactic neighbor the andromeda galaxy as a collection of millions of individual stars to fully observe the dense central region and spiral disk of the galaxy astronomers took 400 distinct pointings with Hubble highlighted by the blue square and connected them to build a wide field mosaic the image is now the gold standard for understanding the detailed makeup of galaxies like the milky way but if you look at the roman field of view highlighted by red outline you can see how enormous roman's footprint is in comparison to Hubble's it would take just two roman pointings to cover the entire region explored by Hubble in this mosaic at the same depth and image clarity the RST will also examine certain individual stars using a light blocking disc called a coronagraph because exoplanets are millions of times dimmer than their host stars trying to image them directly is like taking a picture of a firefly next to a spotlight a coronagraph blocks the host star's light allowing us to see exoplanets directly the roman space telescope is also an astrophysics mission that will help scientists search for dark energy a mysterious force that may be causing the universe to expand at an accelerating rate the RST will study dark energy by mapping the distribution of matter in the cosmos and measuring how the universe has expanded over time the roman space telescope will also be able to detect some of the light wavelengths coming from the exoplanets it directly images thanks to a spectroscopy mode this will tell scientists more about the composition of the exoplanet's atmospheres astronomers will be able to see not only if a planet has an atmosphere but also determine whether its atmosphere contains methane or has clouds it'll work best on Jupiter-sized planets meaning we probably won't be able to peer into the atmospheres of earth-sized exoplanets however RST's coronagraph is specifically meant to test coronagraph technology for future missions scientists have proposed using giant star shades to block the light from stars so perfectly that we can directly image earth-size planets to look for signs of life the roman space telescope's sensitivity and ability to cover a larger viewing area would give it the surveying powers of a hundred Hubble's thanks to its 18 square detectors each of these square detectors would come with the image processing capacity of 4096 by 4096 pixels that will allow the roman space telescope to cover an area roughly 1.33 times the size of a full moon Hubble on the other hand is only able to cover an area of about one percent of the diameter of a full moon the wfi relies on a 300 megapixel camera to capture images in the multiband near infrared part of the spectrum the cgi meanwhile will suppress light coming from distant stars that would otherwise obscure the detection of smaller dimmer objects taken together these instruments will allow roman to see parts of the universe that would otherwise be invisible another advantage the rst would have is its halo orbit at the sun earth L2 Lagrange Point located a million miles from earth this will give it an unobstructed view of the cosmos and the ability to conduct observations in an almost continuous fashion furthermore the coronagraph instrument will also be equipped with deformable mirrors which help counteract small imperfections that reduce image quality using these special mirrors roman's images will reveal far

 dimmer worlds closer to their host star than we would be able to see otherwise the planets roman will observe are so faint that the chronograph instrument will include special detectors to count individual photons of light as they arrive seconds or even minutes apart no other observatory has done this kind of imaging in visible light before the roman space telescope will be an important milestone that will shape our future missions in space thanks to the lessons this telescope will teach us the information roman will provide in the second half of this decade will bring us closer to finding suitable earth-like planets possibly habitable for humans and perhaps help us find what kind of life forms we can expect out there who knows when roman will peer through endless space seeking life out there it might find itself looking at them looking back at us with their telescopes tell us in the comments how excited you are to learn the secrets of the universe that this telescope will unravel  Please don't forget to hit the subscribe button It would mean so much to us