NASA’s latest space observatory has delivered its first images of the cosmos. Launched on Aug. 30, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is traveling toward Lagrange point L2, a stable vantage point roughly a million miles (1.6 million kilometers) from Earth where it will begin its survey of deep space.
The mission’s 300-megapixel camera recorded hundreds of stars as green rings of light. Because the Wide Field Instrument has not yet been fully focused, the test image shows these stars with a soft blur. Over the coming months, engineers will complete calibration and alignment, after which Roman should produce sharp images covering about 100 times the area observed by the Hubble Space Telescope. Scientists expect the telescope to advance major scientific goals, including probing the nature of dark energy and searching for signs of extraterrestrial life.