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[Music throughout]

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Narrator: When it opens its eyes to our universe in the mid-2020s, the

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Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, will capture images unlike any

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satellite before it. The Roman Space Telescope

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will have the same image resolution as Hubble, but will cover an area

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100 times larger. Roman will also view the sky

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in carefully selected wavelengths of infrared light which will allow it

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to see through obscuring dust to reveal hidden stars and

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watch the growth of galaxies over the last 10 billion years.

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To see what the sky will look like to Roman,

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scientists use special processing techniques to create simulated images.

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In this case, they began with a Hubble mosaic

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of Andromeda, one of the closest galaxies to our own.

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Released in 2015, this mosaic was created out of over

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400 individual Hubble images and took more than three years.

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Because of its enormous coverage, Roman

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will be able to create a similar mosaic with just two images, each

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taking about 90 minutes. Roman Space Telescope

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images are actually made of 18 separate panels, each one

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corresponding to a single 16-megapixel detector. The arrangement of

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these detectors creates the distinctive Roman image shape.

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The simulated image is not just special because of its

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size, however. It also shows Andromeda as it will appear through

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Roman’s optics and infrared filters. To achieve this,

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scientists started with Hubble filters that are closest to Roman's.

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Then they used software to measure the positions

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and brightnesses of the roughly 100 million stars in those images

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and applied those as input to Roman image simulation software

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which added each star back to the image after applying the expected

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effects of the Roman optics, filters, and detectors.

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The resulting image reveals many stars that were blocked

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by dust in visible light. It highlights the Roman Space

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Telescope’s role in providing a more comprehensive view of the stars in the local

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universe. Roman will also use its broad view to search

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for planets around other stars in our galaxy and to look for the

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fingerprint of dark matter and dark energy in the distant reaches of the universe.

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With an unprecedented combination of breadth and depth,

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the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will open a new era

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in viewing our universe.

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[Explore: Solar system & beyond]

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[NASA]