March: NASA’s New Horizons Mission

April Program:

Our speaker will be Kevin Gallagher. The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is significantly expected to revise our view of the universe and our understanding of Astronomy. Also known as WFIRST (Wide Field Infra-Red Survey Telescope), the Roman Space Telescope will share some characteristics of the Hubble and Webb Space Telescopes, but these capabilities will be used in a very different way. Because it is a Survey the emphasis will be on broadly surveying the night skies rather than on viewing specific objects. The phrase "Planets by the hundreds, Stars by the billions and Galaxies by the millions" gives an idea of the objectives of this wide-field instrument. In many ways its work will resemble the work done in famous surveys like the Palomar Sky Survey or the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, but the Roman Space Telescope will do this from outer space. It is similar to Hubble in size but with a much wider field and it will be placed at L2 (like Webb) instead of near earth orbit. This will allow the Roman to observe in the near IR and allow the views to be both wide-field and deep. The projected launch window is from late 2026 to mid-year 2027.

Meetings are held on the last Tuesday of the month at 7:30pm at Hyde Observatory in Holmes Park. Meetings are open to the public.