Recent Comments

    Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope tagged posts

    NASA’s Roman telescope will catch 100,000 explosions — and rewrite the Universe’s story

    July 24, 2025, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    High-Latitude Time-Domain Survey infographic
    This infographic describes the High-Latitude Time-Domain Survey that will be conducted by NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. The survey’s main component will cover over 18 square degrees — a region of sky as large as 90 full moons — and see supernovae that occurred up to about 8 billion years ago. Smaller areas within the survey will pierce even farther, potentially back to when the universe was around a billion years old. The survey will be split between the northern and southern hemispheres, located in regions of the sky that will be continuously visible to Roman. The bulk of the survey will consist of 30-hour observations every five days for two years in the middle of Roman’s five-year primary mission.
    Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

    NASA’s Roman Space T...

    Read More

    Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope could detect Supermassive Dark Stars

    June 27, 2023, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    The first stars of the universe were very different than the stars we see today. They were made purely of hydrogen and helium, without heavier elements to help them generate energy in their core. As a result, they were likely hundreds of times more massive than the sun. But some of the first stars may have been even stranger. In the early universe, dark matter could have been more concentrated than it is now, and it may have powered strange stellar objects known as dark stars.

    Since dark matter and regular matter act similarly under gravity, clumps of dark matter in the early universe could have gathered clouds of hydrogen and helium around them. As this matter collapsed under its own weight, dark matter in its core might have generated energy...

    Read More