In the Dark

Just a quick note to mention that tomorrow sees the launch of NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. This is a survey telescope in some respects like ESA’s Euclid but with a larger aperture and different instrumentation, particularly a coronagraph which can block starlight to directly image exoplanets and planet-forming disks. Its larger mirror (2.4m versus 1.2m) will enable it to see fainter objects than Euclid, but its survey will be a much smaller fraction of the sky so in its cosmological applications it is complementary to Euclid rather than a direct competitor for it.

NASA have produced this sort of “cheat sheet” comparing the two observatories:

The Launch is due tomorrow (August 30 2026), at 7:26 am EDT which is 12.26 local Irish Time (same as BST). If you’re so inclined you can watch the launch on YooToob here:

This entry was posted on August 29, 2026 at 5:33 pm and is filed under Euclid, The Universe and Stuff with tags Cosmology, Euclid, Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, NASA. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.