mollwollfumble said:
Tau.Neutrino said:
NASA Telescope Named For ‘Mother of Hubble’ Nancy Grace Roman
NASA is naming its next-generation space telescope currently under development, the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST), in honor of Nancy Grace Roman, NASA’s first chief astronomer, who paved the way for space telescopes focused on the broader universe.
The newly named Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope – or Roman Space Telescope, for short – is set to launch in the mid-2020s. It will investigate long-standing astronomical mysteries, such as the force behind the universe’s expansion, and search for distant planets beyond our solar system.
more…
Hold on. WFIRST already has a public name doesn’t it? Looks up web. Apparently not.
The Roman Space Telescope is based on an existing 2.4 m wide field-of-view telescope and will carry two scientific instruments. The Wide-Field Instrument is a 288-megapixel multi-band near-infrared camera, providing a sharpness of images comparable to that achieved by the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) over a 0.28 square degree field of view, 100 times larger than that of the HST. The Coronagraphic Instrument is a high-contrast, small field-of-view camera and spectrometer covering visible and near-infrared wavelengths using novel starlight-suppression technology.
The Hubble space telescope has a diameter of 2.4 metres.
Wait on. If I remember correctly, WFIRST is a repurposed 2.4 m diameter US spy satellite telescope. Type KH-11 Kennen. It has a much wider field of view than Hubble.
Field of view.
WFIRST = 0.28 square degree field of view = 30 arc minutes.
Webb = up to 4.4 arc minutes
Hubble = up to 0.6 arc minutes
Let’s compare frequency ranges.
Hubble = 0.1 to 2.5 microns – the main workhorse WFC3 is 0.2 to 1.7 microns.
Webb = 0.6 to 28 microns – which makes it blind to visible light.
WFIRST = 0.48 to 2 microns.
WFIRST is a survey telescope. In survey mode it will provide a visible and near infrared map of much of the sky, like the Sloan DSS and 2MASS but better.
Other uses for WFIRST
Imaging nearby galaxies: Magellanic Clouds, Andromeda, Triangulum etc.
Imaging nebulas: Orion, Carina, Barnard Loop, Heart and Soul, etc.
Coronagraph imaging planets around nearby stars.
Imaging Mars, Jupiter, Saturn.
Spectroscopy.
Possibly? Deep imaging of a large piece of the very distant universe. Like GOODS but bigger. GOODS is currently a massive mosaic up to 20 by 30 arc minutes. WFIRST can do that in a single frame.