Orwell Astronomical Society (Ipswich)
The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, 05-08 September 2026
The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is a NASA infrared space telescope that was launched on a trajectory toward a Sun–Earth L2 orbit on 30 August 2026 by a Falcon Heavy launch vehicle. It is named after NASA's first chief of astronomy, Nancy Grace Roman.
On the night of 04-05 September 2026, I had an opportunity to observe the telescope on its way to its L2 orbit. It wasn't visible from my observatory, so I demounted my telescope and attached it to a ZWO AM3 mount standing on a neighbour's drive, from where it was visible, albeit at an altitude of only 16°, and at magnitude about 15.7. I should have been able to capture the F9 carrier rocket in the same FoV, but was thwarted by confusion over relative positions.
In the image below, the LHS panel tracks the stars and shows the space telescope as a short streak, and the RHS panel tracks the telescope and shows the background stars as streaks.
Three days later, with the telescope continuing towards the L2 point, I captured 250 ten second exposures of the surrounding star field. When aligned on the spacecraft, a star-trail crossed over it. The below image shows the view, but with some subframes removed to show the telescope more clearly. All the star trails are parallel, except one: the non-aligned trail is due to asteroid 2784 Domeyko, which is moving relative to the stars, so exhibits a tilted path.
The telescope is visible in the below image at magnitude 17.3 at a distance of 850,000 km at an altitude of 16°. This presents a challenging observation. However, once the telescope attains its L2 orbit, it will appear at a much higher altitude in our sky.
The Falcon Heavy 9 carrier rocket is now too far from the space telescope to appear in the same FoV. The below image shows it, at a distance of 923,000 km, at magnitude 17.3, very close to υ Aquarii. It will shortly move out of range for good.
Nigel Evans