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Rogue Planets - Blog Posts

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2 months ago

On a jet black background, a bright spiral galaxy softly swirls with sprays of stars extending outward from a small, glowing yellow center. Another galaxy is beneath it and to the left, angling downward. This one is shaped almost like a pea pod with faded tendrils of stars extending from both ends. Together, the pair looks like a rose with the spiral galaxy forming the blossom and the elongated one forming the stem. A handful of large, bright stars speckle the background like sparkles. Credit: NASA, ESA, and G. Bacon, T. Borders, L. Frattare, Z. Levay, and F. Summers (Viz 3D team, STScI)

Love Letters from Space

Love is in the air, and it’s out in space too! The universe is full of amazing chemistry, cosmic couples held together by gravitational attraction, and stars pulsing like beating hearts.

Celestial objects send out messages we can detect if we know how to listen for them. Our upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will help us scour the skies for all kinds of star-crossed signals.

On a backdrop speckled with tiny blue and yellow stars, an enormous heart-shaped nebula looms large. Clumps of dust and gas form intricate shapes, twisting around the edges of the “heart” and appearing to blow off the top in wisps so it almost appears to be on fire. The nebula is deep red and lit from within by a clump of bright blue-white stars. Credit: Brent Newton, used with permission

Celestial Conversation Hearts

Communication is key for any relationship – including our relationship with space. Different telescopes are tuned to pick up different messages from across the universe, and combining them helps us learn even more. Roman is designed to see some visible light – the type of light our eyes can see, featured in the photo above from a ground-based telescope – in addition to longer wavelengths, called infrared. That will help us peer through clouds of dust and across immense stretches of space.

Other telescopes can see different types of light, and some detectors can even help us study cosmic rays, ghostly neutrinos, and ripples in space called gravitational waves.

A complicated conglomeration of stars is intertwined on a black backdrop. Two regions glow pale yellow, one at the lower left of the screen and one at the upper right. Each is surrounded with twisted streams of stars which come together near the center of the frame, making the pair of galaxies look almost like a set of angel wings. The region at the center is dark and dusty, and the galaxies glow blue-white with clumps and speckles of bright pink stars. Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble HeritageTeam (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration; Acknowledgment: B. Whitmore (Space Telescope Science Institute)

Intergalactic Hugs

This visible and near-infrared image from the Hubble Space Telescope captures two hearts locked in a cosmic embrace. Known as the Antennae Galaxies, this pair’s love burns bright. The two spiral galaxies are merging together, igniting the birth of brand new baby stars.

Stellar nurseries are often very dusty places, which can make it hard to tell what’s going on. But since Roman can peer through dust, it will help us see stars in their infancy. And Roman’s large view of space coupled with its sharp, deep imaging will help us study how galaxy mergers have evolved since the early universe.

A periodic table of elements titled “Origins of the Elements.” It features the typical boxes and atomic symbols as a usual periodic table, but with pictures inside each indicating how each element is typically forged. A legend at the top explains what each picture means: the big bang, dying low-mass stars, white dwarf supernovae, radioactive decay, cosmic ray collisions, dying high-mass stars, merging neutron stars, and human-made. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

Cosmic Chemistry

Those stars are destined to create new chemistry, forging elements and scattering them into space as they live, die, and merge together. Roman will help us understand the cosmic era when stars first began forming. The mission will help scientists learn more about how elements were created and distributed throughout galaxies.

Did you know that U and I (uranium and iodine) were both made from merging neutron stars? Speaking of which…

An animation that begins with two glowing white orbs spinning around each other ever faster as they move closer together until they appear to join together. Ripples appear around each of them. When they merge, the animation shifts to a zoomed out view that shows an explosion where two fiery orange jets extend out from the center in opposite directions. At the end of each jet, a large, glowing pink ball extends outward and grows larger, so that the whole thing appears like a giant dumbbell. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/CI Lab

Fatal Attraction

When two neutron stars come together in a marriage of sorts, it creates some spectacular fireworks! While they start out as stellar sweethearts, these and some other types of cosmic couples are fated for devastating breakups.

When a white dwarf – the leftover core from a Sun-like star that ran out of fuel – steals material from its companion, it can throw everything off balance and lead to a cataclysmic explosion. Studying these outbursts, called type Ia supernovae, led to the discovery that the expansion of the universe is speeding up. Roman will scan the skies for these exploding stars to help us figure out what’s causing the expansion to accelerate – a mystery known as dark energy.

This animation starts with a dim view of the Milky Way, which angles across the screen from the upper left to lower right. A tiny dark ball at the left grows larger as it moves closer until it briefly takes up most of the screen before passing away again to the right. The view shifts to follow its path and we see it as a rotating planet with brownish stripes. As it moves away, the dark world fades into the background. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/R. Hurt (Caltech-IPAC)

Going Solo

Plenty of things in our galaxy are single, including hundreds of millions of stellar-mass black holes and trillions of “rogue” planets. These objects are effectively invisible – dark objects lost in the inky void of space – but Roman will see them thanks to wrinkles in space-time.

Anything with mass warps the fabric of space-time. So when an intervening object nearly aligns with a background star from our vantage point, light from the star curves as it travels through the warped space-time around the nearer object. The object acts like a natural lens, focusing and amplifying the background star’s light.

Thanks to this observational effect, which makes stars appear to temporarily pulse brighter, Roman will reveal all kinds of things we’d never be able to see otherwise.

On a black background, a white outline in the shape of a blocky rainbow contains a picture of a dusty nebula. It’s mottled brown, green, and blue and speckled with glowing pink stars. Channels of dust twist and curl around the edges of the frame, and at the center a small white box contains a much sharper image of part of the nebula. At the top of the blocky rainbow-like outline, it says, “With you, I see the bigger picture,” and underneath it says, “Love, Roman.” Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

Roman is nearly ready to set its sights on so many celestial spectacles. Follow along with the mission’s build progress in this interactive virtual tour of the observatory, and check out these space-themed Valentine’s Day cards.

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Exploring the Changing Universe with the Roman Space Telescope

The view from your backyard might paint the universe as an unchanging realm, where only twinkling stars and nearby objects, like satellites and meteors, stray from the apparent constancy. But stargazing through NASA’s upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will offer a front row seat to a dazzling display of cosmic fireworks sparkling across the sky.

Roman will view extremely faint infrared light, which has longer wavelengths than our eyes can see. Two of the mission’s core observing programs will monitor specific patches of the sky. Stitching the results together like stop-motion animation will create movies that reveal changing objects and fleeting events that would otherwise be hidden from our view.

Watch this video to learn about time-domain astronomy and how time will be a key element in NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope’s galactic bulge survey. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

This type of science, called time-domain astronomy, is difficult for telescopes that have smaller views of space. Roman’s large field of view will help us see huge swaths of the universe. Instead of always looking at specific things and events astronomers have already identified, Roman will be able to repeatedly observe large areas of the sky to catch phenomena scientists can't predict. Then astronomers can find things no one knew were there!

One of Roman’s main surveys, the Galactic Bulge Time-Domain Survey, will monitor hundreds of millions of stars toward the center of our Milky Way galaxy. Astronomers will see many of the stars appear to flash or flicker over time.

This animation illustrates the concept of gravitational microlensing. When one star in the sky appears to pass nearly in front of another, the light rays of the background source star are bent due to the warped space-time around the foreground star. The closer star is then a virtual magnifying glass, amplifying the brightness of the background source star, so we refer to the foreground star as the lens star. If the lens star harbors a planetary system, then those planets can also act as lenses, each one producing a short change in the brightness of the source. Thus, we discover the presence of each exoplanet, and measure its mass and how far it is from its star. Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab

That can happen when something like a star or planet moves in front of a background star from our point of view. Because anything with mass warps the fabric of space-time, light from the distant star bends around the nearer object as it passes by. That makes the nearer object act as a natural magnifying glass, creating a temporary spike in the brightness of the background star’s light. That signal lets astronomers know there’s an intervening object, even if they can’t see it directly.

A galaxy with a large, warmly glowing circular center and several purplish spiral arms extending outward, wrapped around the center like a cinnamon roll. Stars speckle the entire galaxy, but they are most densely packed near the center where they're yellower. Toward the outer edges, the stars are whiter. Overlaid on top of the galaxy is a small pink outline of a spacecraft located a little more than halfway out toward the bottom edge of the galaxy. A reddish search beam extends across the galaxy through its center, about to the same point on the opposite side. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/CI Lab

This artist’s concept shows the region of the Milky Way NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope’s Galactic Bulge Time-Domain Survey will cover – relatively uncharted territory when it comes to planet-finding. That’s important because the way planets form and evolve may be different depending on where in the galaxy they’re located. Our solar system is situated near the outskirts of the Milky Way, about halfway out on one of the galaxy’s spiral arms. A recent Kepler Space Telescope study showed that stars on the fringes of the Milky Way possess fewer of the most common planet types that have been detected so far. Roman will search in the opposite direction, toward the center of the galaxy, and could find differences in that galactic neighborhood, too.

Using this method, called microlensing, Roman will likely set a new record for the farthest-known exoplanet. That would offer a glimpse of a different galactic neighborhood that could be home to worlds quite unlike the more than 5,500 that are currently known. Roman’s microlensing observations will also find starless planets, black holes, neutron stars, and more!

This animation shows a planet crossing in front of, or transiting, its host star and the corresponding light curve astronomers would see. Using this technique, scientists anticipate NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope could find 100,000 new worlds. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Chris Smith (USRA/GESTAR)

Stars Roman sees may also appear to flicker when a planet crosses in front of, or transits, its host star as it orbits. Roman could find 100,000 planets this way! Small icy objects that haunt the outskirts of our own solar system, known as Kuiper belt objects, may occasionally pass in front of faraway stars Roman sees, too. Astronomers will be able to see how much water the Kuiper belt objects have because the ice absorbs specific wavelengths of infrared light, providing a “fingerprint” of its presence. This will give us a window into our solar system’s early days.

A fiery orange globe appears at the left of a white disk of spinning material. As the disk spins, it draws material from the orange globe. Then suddenly the center of the white disk grows extremely bright as a sphere of white blossoms outward. The explosive white sphere then expands, quickly encompassing the whole screen in white criss-crossed with purplish gray filaments. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/CI

This animation visualizes a type Ia supernova.

Roman’s High Latitude Time-Domain Survey will look beyond our galaxy to hunt for type Ia supernovas. These exploding stars originate from some binary star systems that contain at least one white dwarf – the small, hot core remnant of a Sun-like star. In some cases, the dwarf may siphon material from its companion. This triggers a runaway reaction that ultimately detonates the thief once it reaches a specific point where it has gained so much mass that it becomes unstable.

NASA’s upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will see thousands of exploding stars called supernovae across vast stretches of time and space. Using these observations, astronomers aim to shine a light on several cosmic mysteries, providing a window onto the universe’s distant past. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

Since these rare explosions each peak at a similar, known intrinsic brightness, astronomers can use them to determine how far away they are by simply measuring how bright they appear. Astronomers will use Roman to study the light of these supernovas to find out how quickly they appear to be moving away from us.

By comparing how fast they’re receding at different distances, scientists can trace cosmic expansion over time. This will help us understand whether and how dark energy – the unexplained pressure thought to speed up the universe’s expansion – has changed throughout the history of the universe.

Left of center, two bright blue circular shapes appear to be joined toward the center of the frame. They are whitest on their outermost edges. Debris, also white and bright blue, emanates outward and extends all around the frame. The background is black. Credit: NASA, ESA, J. Olmsted (STScI)

NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will survey the same areas of the sky every few days. Researchers will mine this data to identify kilonovas – explosions that happen when two neutron stars or a neutron star and a black hole collide and merge. When these collisions happen, a fraction of the resulting debris is ejected as jets, which move near the speed of light. The remaining debris produces hot, glowing, neutron-rich clouds that forge heavy elements, like gold and platinum. Roman’s extensive data will help astronomers better identify how often these events occur, how much energy they give off, and how near or far they are.

And since this survey will repeatedly observe the same large vista of space, scientists will also see sporadic events like neutron stars colliding and stars being swept into black holes. Roman could even find new types of objects and events that astronomers have never seen before!

Learn more about the exciting science Roman will investigate on X and Facebook.

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