Next-Gen Space Telescopes – Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope and James Webb Space Telescope
Although Hubble made over 1 million observations throughout the years, it has only imaged about .1% of the sky.
Wouldn’t it be outstanding to have 100 Hubble’s in space expanding our view of the universe?
Well, that’s what the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope or Roman.
The Hubble’s camera has a field of view of 130 x 130 arcsecs, while Roman’s camera has a field of view of 2700 x 1380 arcsecs.
So, the Roman is like a fleet of 100 Hubble’s operating in sync!
This is a picture of the Andromeda Galaxy; it took the Hubble 650 hours to image the blue outlined area.
Roman will be able to image the entire galaxy in just three hours.
One of its missions will be to gather measurements of the shapes and distances of millions of galaxies.
The measurements will be used to create 3D maps that will determine the growth within individual galaxies and the expansion of the universe.
And the maps will help scientists understand more about dark energy that makes up 68% of the universe and is causing the universe’s expansion to accelerate.
We don’t know much about dark energy outside of these characteristics.
Roman will be equipped with an incredible coronagraph that will allow it to observe exoplanets far better than Hubble can.
A coronagraph is essentially like sunglasses for a telescope; they block out the glare of stars, and Roman’s will be 100-1000 times more capable than any other ever launched into space.
Astronomers are currently only able to observe exoplanets that are large and orbit far away from their stars.
With Roman’s coronagraph, astronomers will finally be able to observe earthlike exoplanets that are between 10 million and 10 billion times fainter than the stars they orbit.
The third capability of Roman that I’m most excited about is it will allow us to observe what lies in the heart of our Milky Way galaxy for the first time.
This region of the galaxy is hidden by dust , but Roman’s infrared sensors will be able to see right through the dust.
Astronomers have to be salivating over Roman’s launch.
At 260 x 130 arcsecs, Webb’s field of view is not nearly as large Roman’s, but it is still 15 times larger than Hubble’s.
Overall, Webb will be the largest, most powerful space telescope ever launched.
It is capable of detecting the heat signature of a bumblebee at the distance of the moon!
With a 6.5-meter diameter, Webb’s mirror 6 times surface area of Hubble's mirror
Webb will be able to observe longer wavelengths than Hubble between 0.6 to 28 microns compared to Hubble’s 0.8 to 2.5 microns.
This is key to observing galaxies in the distant past because as they move away from us, the wavelengths of the light shifts to the infrared spectrum, which ranges between .75 microns to several hundred.
Scientists have likely already observed as far back in the past that is possible by observing the Cosmic Microwave Background or CMB, using radio telescopes.
CMB is the oldest electromagnetic radiation in the universe emitted around 370,000 years after the big bang, which occurred 13.8 billion years ago.
Now, the time between the CMB radiation and the formation of the first stars is called the dark age of the universe because there was no light just of a fog of hydrogen atoms.
Scientists believe that the cosmic dark ages ended a few hundred million years after the big bang at around 13.3 billion years in the past.
The Hubble can observe some of the earliest galaxies around 13.1 billion years into the past.
So, with the Webb, scientists hope to discover what the first galaxies in the universe looked like and when they were formed.
And Webb will be used to solve many other mysteries of the universe, such as studying the atmospheres of exoplanets.
Like Roman, Webb has a coronagraph that will enable it to image exoplanets closer to their stars.
It is also equipped with the Near InfraRed Spectrograph that will allow it to identify the color, vegetation, rotation, and weather of the planets.
This is the most substantial mission in space since the ISS, in my opinion.
NASA, ESA, and CSA have been collaborating on the telescope since 1996, and has involved 20 countries; it is genuinely a global achievement.
Since 2006, the budget estimate has ballooned from $4.5 billion to almost $10 billion today.
There is so riding on this mission, not only because of the money spent but also the potential discoveries that Webb will make possible.