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Roman Science Operations Center Newsletter

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January 2023

About This Article

 The latest news from the Science Operations Center (SOC) for the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope

Left of center are two bright blue circular shapes that appear to be joined toward the center of the frame. They are whitest on their outermost edges. These shapes represent illustrations of neutron stars merging. Debris, which is also white and bright blue, emanates in misshapen patterns primarily from where they are joining at the center. The debris extends all around the frame. The background is black.
Roman will detect many distant kilonovae:  Large surveys offer a ton of data that will require precise machine learning to unravel what happens after two neutron stars collide. 

 

Roman Presence at Winter AAS

There will be a Roman Town Hall and multiple Splinter Sessions at the American Astronomical Society Meeting in Seattle. Topics include “Starting Now: Community-Led Definition of the Roman Core Community Surveys” and "Nearby Galaxies under a New Light with Roman". Several Roman-related talks are also scheduled for NASA's Hyperwall, including “The Dynamic Sky with NASA's Roman Space Telescope” (by O. Fox), and “Future Science with NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope” (by K. Gilbert). See all Roman events at AAS.

ROSES Call for Implementation and Science Teams

NASA has released the final version of the ROSES Call related to Roman community funding opportunities. It solicits teams to work on a broad range of science preparatory efforts and to develop infrastructure to pursue Roman science goals. Important deadlines: Notices of Intent are requested by January 20, 2023; Proposals are due by March 21, 2023.

Roman2023 Conference: Roman Science Inspired By Emerging JWST Results

STScI will host the next Roman science conference June 20-23, 2023, as part of an on-going series hosted alternately by STScI and IPAC dating back to 2016. A hybrid conference is being planned, which will focus on how emerging results from JWST inform Roman science. A public lecture and a science writer's workshop will be offered concurrently.

Roman Community Forum

The Roman Project Office at NASA Goddard holds monthly Roman Community Forum virtual meetings to update the community on Roman mission status and plans. These meetings also offer an opportunity for the science community to engage with the Roman Project Office and Science Centers. To keep up to date with the Roman Project sign up to the mailing list by sending an e-mail to Roman-news-join@lists.nasa.gov (no subject or text in the body is required).

Roman Technical Working Groups 

Technical Working Groups bring together scientists from the Project, the Science Centers, and the community, to study and resolve technical issues important for mission success. Existing groups include the Calibration Working Group and Software Working Group. The project is now soliciting new community members for these groups. If interested, please fill out the interest form.

WFI Triplet Test Data Available

To support the science community in preparing for Roman data, the Roman Project team has released a subset of the NASA GSFC Detector Characterization Laboratory (DCL) Wide Field Instrument (WFI) test data via MAST. The team also made available a Jupyter Notebook that demonstrates how to interact with the data files and a description of the FITS format and keywords of the DCL data products. Roman's Wide Field Instrument (WFI) is an array of 18 sensor chip assemblies (SCAs) in a focal plane. Each SCA in the focal plane mosaic consists of a 4096x4096 pixel Teledyne H4RG-10 sensor. Each pixel is 10x10 μm in size. Each SCA has undergone extensive testing in the DCL.

Updates to the Space Telescope Image Product Simulator (STIPS)

The Space Telescope Image Product Simulator (STIPS) software produces simulated imaging data for complex wide-area astronomical scenes, based on user inputs, instrument models and library catalogs for a range of stellar and/or galactic populations. The current Roman Space Telescope version produces images covering a single detector in the Wide Field Instrument (WFI) field of view. A new version of STIPS (v2.0) was released in September 2022. The release includes the implementation of empirical PSFs to improve the astrometry of the sources, as well as several bug fixes.

Recent Roman Technical Reports

View all Roman News at STScI > 

Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope insignia

The NASA Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is managed by NASA/GSFC with participation of STScI, Caltech/IPAC, and NASA/JPL.

Contact the Roman Team