Both Roman and Webb will primarily study the universe in infrared light, allowing them to see warm objects, peer into dusty regions, and gaze across vast stretches of space. Pairing Webb’s powerful observations, which probe even farther into the infrared, with Roman’s big-picture view will reveal untold cosmic wonders. Their overlapping wavelength ranges will allow astronomers to compare their observations to learn much more than from either mission alone.

Using this instrument, each Roman image will capture a patch of the sky bigger than the apparent size of a full Moon. Hubble’s infrared images, taken with its Wide Field Camera 3, are about 200 times smaller. Even Hubble’s widest exposures, taken with the Advanced Camera for Surveys, are nearly 100 times smaller. Over the first five years of observations, Roman will image over 50 times as much sky as Hubble covered in its first 30 years, surveying the sky up to 1,000 times faster than Hubble can while maintaining similar sensitivity and infrared resolution.

This multi-layered technology might more rightly be called “starglasses.” The Roman Coronagraph is a system of masks, prisms, detectors and even self-flexing mirrors built to block out the glare from distant stars and directly image the planets in orbit around them.