This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Look up at the night sky with the naked eye and it may seem like it rarely changes. Yet the universe is in constant flux.
Stars drift through space, orbiting the center of the Milky Way as planets orbit them. They rotate, showing spots on their surfaces and sometimes producing violent outbursts that affect planetary atmospheres much like solar storms produce auroras on Earth. As stars age, they can die dramatically as supernovae, releasing material that will form the next generation of stars and planets.
A new NASA telescope—named after NASA's first chief of astronomy and first female executive, Nancy Grace Roman—will let us observe these changes to the night sky, almost as if we are watching a cosmic high-definition movie. This is thanks to three capabilities working together: sharp images, a huge field of view and repeated observations. The Nancy Grace Roman Telescope is often described as the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope.
It has a mirror the same size as Hubble's and also observes visible and infrared light. But it can observe a much larger patch of the sky—up to 200 times larger. Usually, seeing a bigger patch of sky means sacrificing spatial resolution.
Both the Kepler and the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite planet-hunting telescopes have watched enormous numbers of stars, but their lower spatial resolution means nearby stars can blend together. On the other hand, the James Webb Space Telescope can see more sharply, but its much smaller field of view makes it impractical for monitoring millions of objects at once. The Roman telescope combines high resolution with a wide field of view.
The final key to Roman's power is time: by repeatedly observing the same patches of sky, Roman will reveal changes that a single image could never capture. Those changes unfold on timescales ranging from hours to years, revealing different physical processes. By tracking how the light of objects changes over time, Roman can distinguish patterns and use them to uncover what is happening throughout the universe.
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