A Next-Generation Crowded-Field Stellar Photometry Tool for Roman

PI: Schlafly, Edward, Space Telescope Science Institute
Institutional PI: Nidever, David, Montana State University, Bozeman
Science PI: Smercina, Adam, Space Telescope Science Institute
Institutional PI: Williams, Benjamin, University Of Washington, Seattle
Wide-Field Science – Large

We propose a large Wide Field Science program to develop a next-generation crowded-field stellar photometry tool for Roman. This will support the native Roman data formats and pipeline, making for seamless interoperation with the Roman Research Nexus. Studies of resolved stellar populations are crucial to all four of the community-defined Roman surveys. Roman will encounter crowding wherever it looks, from the Galactic Plane and Bulge – which will identify more sources than any astrophysics survey in history (~100 billion!) – to the High Latitude Surveys – which will survey many nearby galaxies, dwarf galaxies, and stellar streams. As we will demonstrate in this proposal, the photometric measurement approach in the current Roman pipeline will fail to meet the scientific potential of its core surveys for nearby galaxies and the Milky Way disk. There is, therefore, an urgent need for a new crowded-field photometry tool compatible with the Roman Research Nexus, optimized for Roman’s enormous data volume, based on the techniques developed over the past three decades measuring stellar photometry from multi-wavelength imaging. Roman’s success and scientific legacy in the nearby universe hinge on it.

We intend our tool to become the gold-standard for measuring photometry for Roman and for other current and future space missions for decades to come. We have assembled a highly experienced team who will collaborate with the Roman science team, pipeline developers, and other members of the astronomical software community to provide a state-of-the-art crowded-field photometry tool for Roman. The result of this work will be fully documented, open-source software that can be fully integrated into the Roman Research Nexus to be applied to all of Roman’s scientific surveys.