The Hubble Space Telescope has been in orbit for decades, and although it is still very useful, it is aging, and NASA is preparing to replace it. One of the major observations made by the Hubble Space Telescope is images known as Hubble ultra-deep fields. The upcoming Roman space telescope will be much more capable of taking ultra-deep field photos than Hubble.
The Roman space telescope can simultaneously image 100 Hubble ultra deep fields. Hubble has been recording ultra-deep field images since 1995. The first one focused the space telescope on an empty sky for ten days and captured a deep field image with thousands of previously unseen galaxies.
Since then, Hubble has made even longer exposures to capture stellar galaxies, known as Ultra Deep Field. Nancy Grace’s Roman Space Telescope will take similar photos, but the air-covered area is 100 times larger than Hubble can cover. Despite the size of such a large area, the Roman space telescope will provide images with the same sharpness and resolution as Hubble.
Astronomers say that observations by Roman will collect millions of galaxies, including hundreds dating back hundreds of millions of years after the big bang. These observations will help investigations in various areas of science, including the structure and evolution of the universe and how stars form over time.
Scientists say the vast field of vision that Roman offers will be game-changing. The view enables scientists to taste not only one environment in a narrow field of view, but also a variety of environments captured by a very wide view of the cosmos. Scientists expect to get a better idea of where and when star formation occurs.