(ORDO NEWS) — Scientists have created a giant synthetic survey that shows what we can expect from future Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope observations.
While this is only a small part of a real view of the future, this simulated version contains a staggering 33 million galaxies, plus 200,000 stars in our home galaxy, the Milky Way.
The simulations will help scientists plan the best follow-up strategies, test different ways to collect the project’s vast amounts of data, and explore what we can learn from tandem observations with other telescopes.
The team extracted data from a universe mock-up originally developed to support scientific planning at the Vera Rubin Observatory, which is located in Chile and should go live in 2024.
Since Roman and Rubin’s simulations use the same source, astronomers can compare them and get an idea of what can be expected from joint observations of telescopes when they are both actively scanning the Universe.
Roman’s high-latitude wide-field survey will include both visualization, the main focus of the new modeling, and spectroscopy in the same vast region of the universe.
Spectroscopy involves measuring the intensity of light from space objects at different wavelengths, while shooting Roman will reveal the exact position and shape of hundreds of millions of faint galaxies, which will be used to map dark matter.
Although this mysterious substance is invisible, astronomers can determine its presence by observing its effect on ordinary matter.
Anything that has mass warps the fabric of spacetime. The greater the mass, the greater the curvature. This creates an effect called gravitational lensing, where light from a distant source is distorted as it passes by other objects.
If the objects being lensed are massive galaxies or clusters of galaxies, the background sources may be blurred or look like multiple images.
Less massive objects can create more subtle effects called weak lensing. Roman is sensitive enough to use weak lensing to see how clumps of dark matter distort the appearance of distant galaxies.
By observing these lensing effects, scientists will be able to fill more gaps in our understanding of dark matter.
Roman’s synthetic view covers 20 square degrees of the sky, which is roughly equivalent to 95 full moons. The actual survey would be 100 times larger and reveal more than a billion galaxies.
Rubin will scan an even larger area – 18,000 square degrees, almost half of the entire sky, but at a lower resolution as it has to penetrate Earth‘s turbulent atmosphere.
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