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[Music Throughout]

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In 2004, NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope changed astronomy

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forever when astronomers revealed the first ultra-deep field

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image. Created with more than 270 hours

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of observation over the course of a year, it is our farthest ever

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visible-light image of the universe. This tiny window

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revealed thousands of galaxies in a seemingly empty patch of sky.

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We can’t see any farther in visible light

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because the unrelenting expansion of space has stretched galaxies’

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ultraviolet glow into red light. More distant

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galaxies are mostly detectable in infrared.

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That’s why, in 2009, Hubble captured an infrared

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ultra-deep field image that probed even deeper into the same spot.

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It remains one of the most distant images ever

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made, and a key source of information about some of the universe’s

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early history.

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The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will have infrared resolution

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and capabilities similar to Hubble, but each image will cover

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200 times the area of sky. A potential

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Roman ultra-deep field could be far faster to capture, yet cover

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hundreds of times as much of the early universe.

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To further explore this potential, a team of researchers

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has created a simulated ultra-deep field image.

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The entire image contains about one square degree of sky,

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or about 5 full moons. Even a single

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Roman field of view contains a staggering number of distant galaxies,

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each one filled with billions of stars.

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This computer-generated

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image represents the distribution of galaxies that researchers expect to find,

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based on the existing Hubble observations. It will

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help astronomers determine how best to conduct an actual Roman

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ultra-deep field and anticipate the measurements and conclusions they might

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be able to make. Because light travels

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at a finite speed, distant images are also snapshots

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earlier in time. Ultra-deep field images reveal a

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time from about 200 million to 1 billion years after the

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big bang. Roman’s image would be the largest

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observation of its kind for this time period and could reveal

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key features in the adolescent universe, including rare

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‘infant’ galaxies that eventually evolve into mature galaxies

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like our own Milky Way.

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With Roman set to launch by 2027, this simulated

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ultra-deep field image is just one example of the

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fantastic results this upcoming mission could bring

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by the end of the decade.

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[NASA]