Transcripts of Simulated Image FINAL Roman

[Music throughout] Narrator: When it opens its eyes to our universe in the mid-2020s, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, will capture images unlike any satellite before it. The Roman Space Telescope will have the same image resolution as Hubble, but will cover an area 100 times larger. Roman will also view the sky in carefully selected wavelengths of infrared light which will allow it to see through obscuring dust to reveal hidden stars and watch the growth of galaxies over the last 10 billion years. To see what the sky will look like to Roman, scientists use special processing techniques to create simulated images. In this case, they began with a Hubble mosaic of Andromeda, one of the closest galaxies to our own. Released in 2015, this mosaic was created out of over 400 individual Hubble images and took more than three years. Because of its enormous coverage, Roman will be able to create a similar mosaic with just two images, each taking about 90 minutes. Roman Space Telescope images are actually made of 18 separate panels, each one corresponding to a single 16-megapixel detector. The arrangement of these detectors creates the distinctive Roman image shape. The simulated image is not just special because of its size, however. It also shows Andromeda as it will appear through Roman’s optics and infrared filters. To achieve this, scientists started with Hubble filters that are closest to Roman's. Then they used software to measure the positions and brightnesses of the roughly 100 million stars in those images and applied those as input to Roman image simulation software which added each star back to the image after applying the expected effects of the Roman optics, filters, and detectors. The resulting image reveals many stars that were blocked by dust in visible light. It highlights the Roman Space Telescope’s role in providing a more comprehensive view of the stars in the local universe. Roman will also use its broad view to search for planets around other stars in our galaxy and to look for the fingerprint of dark matter and dark energy in the distant reaches of the universe. With an unprecedented combination of breadth and depth, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will open a new era in viewing our universe. [Explore: Solar system & beyond] [NASA]