JAKARTA – The United States Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) will launch the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, the mother of the Hubble Space Telescope, in 2027.
This telescope will be placed at a distance of 1.5 million kilometers from Earth in the opposite direction of the sun to observe the universe using infrared. The observation targets from this telescope are exoplanets and dark matter in space.
Dark matter is energy that fills space. The form of this material is invisible and cannot be detected from the radiation emitted. Apart from that, dark matter also does not interact with light or electromagnetic fields.
Even though dark matter is still just a hypothesis, NASA astronomers want to prove that this material really exists and makes up 85 percent of the total mass of the universe. To find this material, astronomers will observe the findings of the Roman Telescope.
They will focus on exploring tidal flows from the globular cluster orbiting the Andromeda galaxy. By observing the flow of globular clusters, astronomers will examine interstellar gaps and determine the concrete nature of dark matter.
“Roman will take a big picture of the Andromeda galaxy that is not possible with other telescopes. “We also predict that Roman will be able to detect individual stars,” said one of the researchers, Christian Aganze.
Aganze realizes that this search will be quite difficult because dark matter has not been proven to date. However, Aganze believes that dark matter does fill space because he sees the effects of dark matter in galaxies.
“For example, when we model how galaxies rotate, we need extra mass to explain the rotation. “Dark matter may provide the missing mass,” Aganze explained.
Therefore, astronomers will rely on the Roman Telescope in the search for this dark matter. This telescope is estimated to be able to work efficiently by sending the required data in just one hour.
Tag: solar system telescope galaxy
2024-01-18 09:05:00
#NASA #Astronomers #Search #Dark #Matter #Nancy #Grace #Roman #Telescope
