Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope Launch

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: