Roman Workshop 2021

by | Feb 3, 2026 | Climate Change

RomanHomeAbout RomanScience OverviewObservatoryFor ScientistsNewsMultimediaNovember 15th – 19th, 2021

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope project held a virtual community workshop on November 15-19, 2021. Anyone interested in learning about the status of the Roman mission and its very broad range of science capabilities was invited to attend. The workshop goal is to share with the astronomical community the extensive work that has been done by the outgoing Roman science investigation teams to provide scientific support for mission design activities. The workshop focuses on science with the Wide-Field Instrument, with a separate session about the coronagraph technology-demonstration instrument occurring in late October.

Roman is a NASA Astrophysics Observatory featuring a 2.4m near-infrared-optimized telescope with a wide-field survey instrument and a coronagraph technology-demonstration instrument. Roman is due to launch in the mid 2020s and will address many fundamental questions in the areas of cosmology, exoplanets, and infrared survey astrophysics. In 2015, NASA selected eleven science investigation teams, comprising over 300 people, that span a broad range of astrophysical subfields (including, e.g., cosmology, exoplanets, galaxy evolution, stellar populations, and archival research methods). These teams have contributed significantly to shaping the current mission design and operations concept. Their work is now complete, and new science opportunities will be solicited by NASA in early 2022.

The workshop starts with a project overview of the mission and its status, and the capabilities being developed by the mission’s science operations and support centers. Each science investigation team will then share their Roman-related activities and results, which include:

Evaluation of science and calibration requirements and instrument performance.

Design of notional observing programs.

Development of data analysis techniques and software.

Scientific simulations.

Precursor observations.

By sharing this information, future science community activities will be able to leverage the knowledge and tools that have already been developed. The actual implementation of Roman’s core surveys remains to be defined through an open, community-driven process.

PRESENTATIONS

Monday, November 15

Mission Overview

Moderators: Russell Ryan, Max Mutchler

Studying the Milkyway with Roman

Chair: Jason Tumlinson; Moderators: Richard Cosentino, Andreea Petric

Nearby Galaxies (WINGS)

Chair: Adrien Thob; Moderators: Russell Ryan, Max Mutchler

Ben Williams, Roman Nearby Galaxies Science Overview

Adrien Thob, The Roman Crowded Field Photometry Pipeline

Leo Girardi, Stellar Models in the Roman Bands

Martha Boyer, AGB Studies with Roman

Anil Seth, Optimizing Roman Star Cluster Observations

Eric Bell, The Roman Background and Stellar Halos

Dave Sand, Characterizing Dwarf Satellite Galaxies with Roman

Robyn Sanderson, Simulating Roman Star Catalogs

Shifra Mandel, Finding Structures in Stellar Halos with Roman

Chris Kervick, Measuring the Binary Star Separation Function With Roman

Tuesday, November 16

Exoplanet microlensing studies with the Roman Galactic Exoplanet Survey

Chair: Scott Gaudi; Moderators: Andreea Petric, Sebastian Gomez, Russell Ryan, Richard Cosentino

Scott Gaudi, Introduction & Welcome

David Bennett, Motivation for the RGES Survey and SIT

Matthew Penny, Samson Johnson, Survey Yield and Optimization

Geoff Bryden, The UKIRT Microlensing Survey

Aparna Bhattacharya, Microlensing Mass Measurements

Sebastiano Calchi-Novati, Roman Detector Simulations

Radek Poleski, Jennifer Yee, Outreach and MulensModel

Matthew Penny, Microlensing Data Challenge

Scott Gaudi, Summary and Future Work

Exploiting Roman Data Archives

Chair: Marc Postman; Moderators: Richard Cosentino, Sebastian Gomez

Wedneseday, November 17

Cosmology with the High Latitude Survey

Moderators: Carol Christian, Max Mutchler, Richard Cosentino

Olivier Doré (JPL/Caltech), HLS introduction and SIT highlights

Chris Hirata (OSU), HLS survey design

Mike Jarvis (Penn), Heyang Long (OSU), Jahmour Givans (Princeton), Chien-Hao Lin (Duke), Masaya Yamamoto (Duke), Michael Troxel (Duke), Realistic image simulations: Framework, Applications, Products, and Joint simulations with Rubin

Dan Masters, Shoubaneh Hemmati (Caltech/IPAC), Photometric redshift plans

Yun Wang (Caltech/IPAC), HLS spectroscopic survey overview

Zhongxu Zhai (Waterloo), Anahita Alavi, James Colbert (Caltech/IPAC), Roman HLSS: galaxy and grism simulations

Heidi Wu (BSU), David Weinberg (OSU), Galaxy clusters cosmology

Tim Eifler (UA), Vivian Miranda (Brookhaven), Elisabeth Krause (UA), Eric Huff (JPL), Pranjal Rajendra (UA), Jiachuan Xu (UCB), Lado Samushia (KSU), Alice Pisani (Princeton), Cosmological forecast status: Multi-probe inference; Next Gen Pipeline – Cocoa; 2D+3D ; Kinematic Lensing concept and overview; KL measurement with Keck and HST; KL with Roman; Higher-order statistics; Voids based cosmology

Henry Gebhardt (JPL), Kris Pardo (JPL), Lukas Wenzl (Cornell) & Cyrille Doux (Penn), Shirley Ho (CCA, NYU), Bhuvnesh Jain (Penn), HLS research highlights: Novel clustering statistics for Roman; Measuring DM substructures with Roman; Synergies with Roman and CMB lensing from SO; Simulating Roman with ML; Roman and ML-based cosmology

Roman Detectors and Calibration

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