Simulated ultra-deep field image shows NASA Roman telescope's power; will launch in 2027

While Hubble's Ultra Deep Field offers an incredible window to the early universe, but it's extremely small to reveal much information. On the other hand, Roman, with its enormous field of view and infrared vision, can offer a much broader view of cosmic ecosystems, allowing astronomers to peer far and wide simultaneously and better understand how early galaxies formed.

A new simulation has demonstrated the power of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, NASA's next-gen observatory designed to probe the infrared universe, to conduct a mega-exposure similar to but far larger than Hubble's Ultra Deep Field Image.

The team led by Nicole Drakos, a postdoctoral scholar at the University of California Santa Cruz, created a synthetic catalog of galaxies, complete with detailed information about each one.

While Hubble's Ultra Deep Field offers an incredible window to the early universe, but it's extremely small to reveal much information. On the other hand, Roman, with its enormous field of view and infrared vision, can offer a much broader view of cosmic ecosystems, allowing astronomers to peer far and wide simultaneously and better understand how early galaxies formed.

According to the researchers, while a Roman ultra-deep field would be just as sharp as Hubble's and peer equally far back in time, it could reveal an area 300 times larger.

In this study, the team showed that Roman's ability to image large patches of the distant universe and reveal both rare and faint objects could help astronomers find as many as 100,000 quiescent galaxies. The findings of the study will be published in The Astrophysical Journal.

Roman has the unique ability to image very large areas of the sky, which allows us to see the environments around galaxies in the early universe. Our study helps demonstrate what a Roman ultra-deep field could tell us about the universe, while providing a tool for the scientific community to extract the most value from such a program.

Nicole Drakos

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is scheduled to launch in 2027. The observatory's science instruments include:

• 300-megapixel Wide Field Instrument - a powerful infrared camera that will allow scientists to look very far back in time.
• Coronagraph, NASA's first advanced coronagraph in space, designed to directly image exoplanets by blocking out a star's light, allowing the much fainter planets to be observed.