Caption

This video shows a zoom into the Milky Way’s galactic bulge near the galactic center. As it zooms in, the view changes from the near-infrared 2MASS survey to the VISTA VVV survey (both ground-based). At the conclusion of the zoom, part of the region of the galactic bulge that will be surveyed by Roman’s Galactic Bulge Time-Domain Survey is highlighted with five stacked fields of view. (Roman will also observe a sixth field at the galactic center that is not shown here.)

Prior to Roman’s launch, a team of researchers are using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope to observe the same regions to enable better analysis of microlensing events detected by Roman. The colored lines representing the Hubble survey area are stylized and represent a large number of individual pointings. The video also labels Sagittarius A* (pronounced “A star”), the black hole at the Milky Way’s center.