Hubble Space Telescope

Per the press release, they found that for an Earth-like planet orbiting a Sun-like star, a civilization producing the same amount of nitrogen dioxide as ours could be detected up to about thirty light-years away with about four hundred hours of observing time using a future large NASA telescope observing at visible wavelengths.

This is a substantial but not unprecedented amount of time, as NASA's Hubble Space Telescope took a similar amount of time for the famous Deep Field observations.

Additionally, stars that are cooler and more common than our Sun, what we call K- and M-type stars or red dwarfs, will actually produce a more easily detected nitrogen dioxide signal.

Since those stars are more abundant, we have more chances for finding technosignatures from planets in orbit around them.

Once in position, Roman will begin its initial five-year mission to reveal some of the universe's darkest secrets, including new clues about the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy.

Unlike the Hubble and Webb Space Telescopes, which focus on individual objects in the sky, Roman will capture whole cosmic ecosystems, discovering things scientists never even knew existed.

Seven minutes after launch, mission control teams at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, began receiving telemetry data from the telescope.

Nominal orbit insertion.

I spoke to ABC science reporter Ellen Fiddian about this new piece of astronomy kit.

What makes this telescope different from the other space telescopes up there, Hubble and the James Webb Space Telescope?

It's exactly the same size as the Hubble Space Telescope.

The mirror, which is the thing that collects all of the light in, is 2.4 meters, same size as the Hubble, and that makes it a lot smaller than the James Webb Space Telescope.

But what differentiates it from both of them is its wide field of view.

So the Roman Space Telescope isn't gonna be able to see as far into space as the James Webb Space Telescope.

It's not quite as powerful, but every snapshot it takes of the cosmos is about 100 times the size of what the James Webb Space Telescope can do.

So it's these much more wide-angled pictures, and they're also a lot wider than Hubble as well.

And so I wanted to create content that made astronomy accessible to a more general audience.

And so I focused more on asking, like, for example, I have a video which is like what do unedited Hubble photos look like? Because I was curious.

I was like, well, the Hubble Space Telescope, we always see these beautiful images from it.

A lot of people say, "Well, you know, they're edited," and this and that, "so they're not real." And so I was like, "So what do they look like when they come straight off the camera?" And so I explore that question in that video.

And then other ideas which is like, uh, I went...

And so I wanted to create content that made astronomy accessible to a more general audience.

And so I focused more on asking, like, for example, I have a video which is like, what do unedited Hubble photos look like? Because I was curious.

I was like, well, the Hubble Space Telescope, we always see these beautiful images from it.

A lot of people say, well, you know, they're edited and this and that, so they're not real.

And so I was like...

So we launched telescopes.

You know the Hubble Space Telescope, I'm sure.

Everybody knows that one.

I think

Hubble was originally based in Connecticut, where I am.

Oh, shoot.

I don't know that.

Christmas Day 2021.

So they have a rescue opportunity if there's a heat shield damage.

One mission was flown to the Hubble Space Telescope, which is tilted 28 degrees to the equator.

But on that mission, they had a shuttle ready to go to rescue them if there was a problem.

So that's how they handled it after Columbia.

It's internally sometimes called the Humboldt Space Telescope, and it has this aperture of about 15 centimeters to observe stars and potentially look for transiting planets.

So the reason why we went to MOST rather than, say, the Hubble Space Telescope, is that this would be far too high-risk for Hubble.

But a small telescope like MOST was up to the challenge.

So the first time we asked in 2013, even MOST said this was too high-risk and didn't accept it.