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The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, set to launch around May 2027, will provide a groundbreaking view of the Milky Way Galaxy. This NASA mission aims to monitor hundreds of millions of stars in search of subtle flickers that indicate the presence of celestial objects, including exoplanets, distant stars, icy objects in our solar system, black holes, and more.
Roman’s capabilities are essential for advancing the field of time-domain astronomy, which focuses on studying how the universe evolves over time.
The telescope’s Galactic Bulge Time-Domain Survey will focus on the Milky Way Galaxy, utilizing its infrared vision to peer through dust clouds that obstruct our view of the galaxy’s central region.
Roman’s unique capabilities make it a valuable discovery machine with its vast field of view and precise vision.
This NASA mission will actively search for microlensing events, which occur when objects align perfectly, causing the foreground object to act as a natural magnifying glass, temporarily brightening the background star’s light.
The survey involves taking images every 15 minutes around the clock for about two months, and this process will be repeated six times over Roman’s five-year primary mission.
Astronomers anticipate that this extended observation will unveil over a thousand planets, some potentially within their star’s habitable zone.
Roman Space Telescope’s microlensing observations will also shed light on the prevalence of planets around different types of stars, including binary systems.
Beyond exoplanets, Roman will detect neutron stars, black holes, brown dwarfs, Kuiper belt objects, and even contribute to stellar seismology studies, offering a broader and more in-depth understanding of the ever-changing universe.
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