Roman telescope aims to directly image exoplanets 1,000 times fainter than current limits

An artist’s concept of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. Credit: NASA/SVS The Roman Space Telescope is designed to directly image exoplanets using complex optomechanical systems developed by the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy. The telescope is named after Nancy Grace Roman, who was considered the architect of NASA's modern science program and, among other efforts, dedicated herself to the success of the Hubble Space Telescope project. The Roman Space Telescope is scheduled to launch on Aug. 30, 2026, at 7:26 a.m. EDT. It will orbit the sun at the L2 Lagrange point, where gravitational forces cancel out, allowing it to avoid propulsion. The telescope carries two scientific instruments: The Wide Field Instrument has a detector area about 100 times larger than Hubble's and will image an area of the sky 50 times larger than Hubble did over 30 years. Together with the Euclid space telescope, Roman will track down dark matter and search for cooler planets using two methods—transit and microlensing. The Coronagraph Instrument (CGI) is used to directly image and study exoplanets that have already been discovered using other methods. The CGI is designed to image exoplanets as point sources that are about a thousand times fainter than what has been technically possible to date. To achieve this, all optical components must be very precisely aligned. The Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg has built optomechanical components specifically for this purpose, which form the Precision Alignment Mechanisms (PAMs). If this system proves successful, it could be used to photograph even smaller and fainter rocky planets, such as Earth, in the future that orbit other stars. The PAMs position and stabilize the optical elements of the CGI during observations. The PAMs are essential for achieving the extreme precision of the optics required to photograph planets orbiting their stars in distant star systems. They ensure that the coronagraph's built-in masks, as well as its filters and mirrors, tilt by no more than 40 milliarcseconds over an eight-hour period. This corresponds to the angle at which a person in Los Angeles would be perceived when viewed from Heidelberg. The Max Planck Institute provided six flight models of the positioning mechanism for the Coronagraph Instrument (CGI), which will be launched into space. Another six engineering models are used for ground-based testing. The PAMs are designed to suppress optical turbulence and image artifacts, which have historically dominated images from coronagraphs. The CGI is the most sophisticated optical observation instrument ever used for research in space. If the initial tests in space are successful, the CGI will be made available to astronomers for the study of exoplanets. The CGI will directly image exoplanets that appear, as seen from Earth, a billion times fainter than their host star. This roughly corresponds to the difference in brightness between Jupiter and the sun. The CGI is designed to image exoplanets as point sources that are about a thousand times fainter than what has been technically possible to date. The telescope cannot be reached or repaired once launched, as was possible with Hubble. The Roman Space Telescope's optical system is subject to distorting effects in space, which are suppressed by the telescope's own optical design.

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