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Observations

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is designed to be capable of a set of notional observing programs that form Roman’s design reference mission, and whose execution would fulfill the mission’s top level science objectives.

There are two flavors of observing programs on Roman. These include the Core Community Surveys and General Astrophysics Surveys, undertaken with the Wide Field Instrument (WFI). Funding to work with Roman data, will be competed and selected through future calls for proposals and peer reviews. Additionally, a set of technology demonstration observations will be undertaken with the Coronagraph Instrument.

All Roman observations will be publicly available with no period of exclusive access.

General Astrophysics Surveys

There will be opportunities for the general astronomy community to competitvely propose for Roman survey observations. The entire sky is open for General Astrophysics Surveys with the WFI over a total period of ~15 months out of the nominal mission. Details are available at General Astrophysics Surveys.

Core Community Surveys

The Core Community Surveys (CCS) are the High Latitude Wide Area Survey, the High Latitude Time Domain Survey, and the Galactic Bulge Time Domain Survey. The implementation of Roman’s core surveys were defined through an open, community-driven process. Links below describe the final definitions of the CCS by the Roman Observatory Time Allocation Committee (ROTAC). (See the final report from the ROTAC.)

Galactic Bulge Time Domain Survey

High Latitude Time Domain Survey

High Latitude Wide Area Survey

Technology Demonstration

The Coronagraph Instrument on Roman will be a technology demonstation as a pathway to the Habitable Worlds Observatory that will directly image Earth-like planets around other stars. Currently it is expected to be sensitive to a contrast of 10-8 around V=5 magnitude stars. The Coronagraph Instrument will observe selected nearby stars over a total period of ~3 months. For more information, see the Coronagraph Instrument page and the Coronagraph Participation Program (CPP).