Caption

How will NASA’s Roman Space Telescope detect kilonovae – brief flashes of light sent out by the merger of two neutron stars or a neutron star and a black hole? In part, due to the telescope’s wide field of view. Roman’s view is 200 times larger than the Hubble Space Telescope’s infrared view. Once Roman starts observing the sky at a regular cadence following its launch, planned by 2027, researchers expect to be able to identify more of these spectacular events, both nearby and very far away. Although we do not yet know the rate of these events, when Roman’s data pour in we will begin to learn how frequent these mergers are – and what results.