Transcripts of WFI FINAL Roman_1

[Music Throughout] The Wide [Music Throughout] The Wide Field Instrument is the heart of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. It is what allows the Roman Space Telescope to take pictures with the same detail as Hubble, but covering an area 100 times larger. Despite this incredible power, the basic design is the same as telescopes around the world. Light enters through Roman's 2.4-meter aperture and is reflected and focused by the curved main mirror, which is also the largest mirror in the telescope. This light is reflected and focused once more by the secondary mirror. More elements tighten the beam and strip it of stray light rays before it passes through the filter wheel. This wheel has a variety of filters that allow different wavelengths of light to pass through. It spins from one to another depending on what the researcher is looking for. Finally, the focused and filtered light reaches the focal plane, where it creates an image on the detectors. These detectors use the photoelectric effect to convert photons into an electrical signal that is then decoded into an image. In Roman's case, there are 18 detectors, allowing it to create 300-million-pixel images of large patches of the sky. The large number of detectors and pixels gives Roman its wide field of view. The size of the mirror and the precision of it optics gives Roman its fine imaging. This combination of image size and detail has never been possible on a space-based telescope before and will make the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope an indespensible tool in the future. Explore: Solar system & beyond. NASA