How do scientists studying space with data from a telescope hundreds of thousands of miles away know that what they are seeing is real? A new NASA project, Artifact InSPECtor, invites you to find out – and by doing so, to help missions like Euclid and NASA’s new Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope answer fundamental
According to the standard model of cosmology, that expansion rate should be the same no matter how you measure it. But in recent years, scientists have found that the expansion rate of the early universe and that of the more recent universe vary by approximately 9 percent. That discrepancy, or tension, “has provoked heated debates
The driving force behind our universe’s accelerated expansion remains one of the greatest mysteries in astronomy. While this force, which scientists refer to as dark energy, pervades our universe, we know almost nothing about it. Located on a remote mountain in Arizona’s Sonoran Desert, the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) has spent the past five
Roman joins an international cohort of teamworking telescopes. Roman will work in tandem with many other NASA-led and international missions to provide the most complete view of our universe yet. Roman’s large panoramas will uncover interesting targets that Hubble could follow up on using infrared, visible, and ultraviolet light to offer a more comprehensive view.
“If we consider what the James Webb Space Telescope is doing, it’s optimized towards looking at the very distant universe … but just a tiny patch of the sky,” says astrophysicist Rachel Mandelbaum of Carnegie Mellon University. “In contrast, Roman is able to look at a large area of the sky at once.” That broad
