Watch: Astrophotographer captures Roman telescope flying in space to its new home
NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope has been captured in a timelapse video by an astrophotographer as it travels toward its destination at the L2 Lagrange point. The mission aims to investigate dark matter, dark energy, and exoplanets with significantly higher efficiency than the Hubble telescope.
Why it matters
The successful launch and deployment of this telescope represent a major advancement in our ability to survey the universe and search for habitable worlds.
A faint moving dot crossing the night sky may not look like much. But one such dot recently turned out to be Nasa's newest Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, speeding towards its new home nearly 1.6 million kilometres from Earth.Arizona-based astrophotographer Andrew McCarthy captured the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope in a timelapse video just days after its launch.McCarthy later shared the footage on September 8, asking viewers if they could spot Roman moving across the sky.He later circled the tiny moving object and pointed out several other bodies visible in the frame.WHAT IS THE NANCY GRACE ROMAN SPACE TELESCOPE?Officially called the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, the observatory is named after Nancy Grace Roman, Nasa's first chief astronomer and a key figure in the agency's space astronomy programme.Roman is designed to investigate some of the biggest questions in astronomy, including the nature of dark matter and dark energy, while…
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