AI Generated Image
Half-a-million 4K TV's to view one photo: Why Nasa's new space telescope is special
The Times of India • • science
Key Points:
- The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, launched in 2024, features two-meter-wide curved mirrors originally built for a US spy satellite program and offers a 300-megapixel camera for wide-field astronomical surveys.
- Positioned 1.5 million kilometers from Earth, Roman will survey 50 times more sky in five years than Hubble did in 30, capturing enormous panoramic images and generating about 20 petabytes of data.
- Unlike Hubble and James Webb telescopes, Roman specializes in large-scale sky surveys with 100 times Hubble’s field of view and 1,000 times Webb’s survey speed, enabling broad cosmic observations.
- The telescope includes a coronagraph to image exoplanets by blocking starlight, advancing technologies for future missions aimed at identifying potentially habitable worlds.
- Roman’s data will complement the Vera C Rubin Observatory’s ground-based visible light surveys, together enhancing the search for new planets, galaxies, and black holes, continuing the legacy of their namesakes, Nancy Grace Roman and Vera Rubin.
