“This gas giant exoplanet is slightly larger than Jupiter, orbits within a Sun-like star’s habitable zone, and is relatively close to Earth – just 44 light-years away,” said Prabal Saxena, an assistant research scientist at the University of Maryland, College Park and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and the lead author of a paper describing the results. “The Coronagraph Instrument will perform several hundred times better than current instruments, so we will be able to see Jupiter-like planets that are more than 100 million times fainter than their host stars.”Ī team of scientists recently simulated a promising target for Roman to image, called Upsilon Andromedae d. “To image Earth-like planets, we’ll need 10,000 times better performance than today’s instruments provide,” said Vanessa Bailey, an astronomer at JPL and the instrument technologist for the Roman Coronagraph. By photographing worlds in visible light, Roman will be able to image mature planets spanning ages up to several billion years – something that has never been done before. To do so, astronomers need to be able to see smaller, cooler, dimmer planets orbiting much closer to their host stars than current telescopes can. The Roman Coronagraph could complement other telescopes’ infrared observations by imaging young super-Jupiters in visible light for the first time, according to a study by a team of scientists.īut astronomers would also like to directly image planets that are similar to our own one day – rocky, Earth-sized planets orbiting Sun-like stars within their habitable zones, the range of orbital distances where temperatures allow liquid water to exist on a planet’s surface. They also tend to be very far away from their host stars because it’s easier to block the star’s light and see planets in more distant orbits. These worlds are typically super-Jupiters that are less than 100 million years old – so young that they glow brightly thanks to heat left over from their formation, which makes them detectable in infrared light. These measurements will complement existing data by probing fainter dust disks orbiting nearer to their host stars than other telescopes can see.Ĭurrent direct imaging efforts are limited to enormous, bright planets. Roman may even be able to reveal structures in the disks, such as gaps created by unseen planets. Astronomers will use polarized images to study the dust grains that make up the disks around stars, including their sizes, shapes, and possibly mineral properties. If Roman’s Coronagraph Instrument successfully completes its technology demonstration phase, its polarimetry mode will allow astronomers to image the disks around stars in polarized light, familiar to many as the reflected glare blocked by polarized sunglasses. Since living things modify their environment in ways we might be able to detect, such as by producing oxygen or methane, scientists hope this research will pave the way for future missions that could reveal signs of life. This, in turn, can offer clues about the processes occurring on the imaged worlds that may affect their habitability. However, recent advancements in technology allow astronomers to actually take images of the reflected light from the planets themselves.Īnalyzing the colors of planetary atmospheres helps astronomers discover what the atmospheres are made of. That’s why nearly all of the worlds discovered so far have been found indirectly through effects they have on their host stars. “Doing so from space will help us see smaller, older, and colder planets than direct imaging usually reveals, bringing us a giant leap closer to imaging planets like Earth.”Įxoplanets – planets beyond our solar system – are so distant and dim relative to their host stars that they’re practically invisible, even to powerful telescopes. JPL is building Roman’s Coronagraph Instrument. “We will be able to image worlds in visible light using the Roman Coronagraph,” said Rob Zellem, an astronomer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California who is co-leading the observation calibration plan for the instrument. Roman will use its Coronagraph Instrument – a system of masks, prisms, detectors, and even self-flexing mirrors built to block out the glare from distant stars and reveal the planets in orbit around them – to demonstrate that direct imaging technologies can perform even better in space than they have with ground-based telescopes. The mission aims to photograph worlds and dusty disks around nearby stars with detail up to a thousand times better than possible with other observatories. view moreĬredit: Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/CI Labs NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, now under construction, will test new technologies for space-based planet hunting. Image: Image illustrating a coronagraph blocking most of a star's light.
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