Another Space Telescope is Coming: The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Source/Credit: Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope from NASA.

With all the excitement about the James Webb Space Telescope coming online shortly, we do not want to forget about another space telescope in development. NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, expected to be launched in 2027, will be even more productive than the Hubble Space Telescope. NASA noted the new space telescope will be:

Providing the same crisp infrared resolution as Hubble over a field of view 200 times larger, Roman will conduct sweeping cosmic surveys that would take hundreds of years using Hubble. Roman will map stars, galaxies, and dark matter to explore the formation and evolution of large cosmic structures, like clusters and superclusters of galaxies, and investigate dark energy, which is thought to accelerate the expansion of the universe.

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will also have a Coronagraph Instrument that will be able to detect more exoplanets, including smaller, rocky exoplanets similar to Earth. By using the parent star’s reflected light on a larger exoplanet, this instrument will also allow astronomers to analyze the colors of the exoplanet’s atmosphere and learn more about the content of that atmosphere (complementing other studies of large exoplanets, one of which was noted here earlier). If successful, this technology could be refined further to one day help to detect oxygen, methane, and other elements/compounds in the atmosphere of distant, Earth-sized exoplanets.

Astronomer Vanessa Bailey from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory stated:

To image Earth-like planets, we’ll need 10,000 times better performance than today’s instruments provide…The Coronagraph Instrument will perform several hundred times better than current instruments, so we will be able to see Jupiter-like planets that are more than 100 million times fainter than their host stars.

The telescope is named after Nancy Grace Roman, who was NASA’s first chief astronomer and also known as the “Mother of Hubble” for her efforts in making the Hubble Space Telescope a reality. You can read more about her here.

Viewing the Dark-side of an Exoplanet

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Source/Credit: Artist’s image of WASP-121b from Engine House VFX.

It was not so long ago that we were questioning the very existence of exoplanets, and now we are measuring their dark-sides. MIT News has a story about a recent paper discussing the findings of astronomers observing an exoplanet approximately 850 light years from Earth. About twice the size of Jupiter and tidally-locked with its host star, the exoplanet has a very strange water cycle. The article states:

While on Earth, water cycles by first evaporating, then condensing into clouds, then raining out, on WASP-121b, the water cycle is far more intense: On the day side, the atoms that make up water are ripped apart at temperatures over 3,000 kelvins. These atoms are blown around to the night side, where colder temperatures allow hydrogen and oxygen atoms to recombine into water molecules, which then blow back to the day side, where the cycle starts again.

The article and paper go into many more details, yet I am most impressed with this level of observation already possible using a spectroscopic camera aboard NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. With the James Webb Space Telescope soon to go online, we can only hope for more fascinating insights into distant exoplanets.

Pic of the Week: Giant Star on the Edge of Destruction

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Source/Credit: NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope

This week’s image from the Hubble Space Telescope shows an erupting star, as explained by the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Hubble site:

The giant star…is waging a tug-of-war between gravity and radiation to avoid self-destruction. The star, called AG Carinae, is surrounded by an expanding shell of gas and dust — a nebula — that is shaped by the powerful winds of the star. The nebula is about five light-years wide, which equals the distance from here to our nearest star, Alpha Centauri.

The huge structure was created from one or more giant eruptions several thousand years ago. The star’s outer layers were blown into space, the expelled material amounting to roughly 10 times the mass of our Sun. These outbursts are typical in the life of a rare breed of star called a Luminous Blue Variable (LBV), a brief unstable phase in the short life of an ultra-bright, glamorous star that lives fast and dies young. These stars are among the most massive and brightest stars known. They live for only a few million years, compared to the roughly 10-billion-year lifetime of our own Sun. AG Carinae is a few million years old and resides 20,000 light-years away inside our Milky Way galaxy. The star’s expected lifetime is between 5 million and 6 million years.