Roman Science Team Community Briefing
November 15th – 19th, 2021
The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope project held a virtual community workshop on November 15-19, 2021. Anyone interested in learning about the status of the Roman mission and its very broad range of science capabilities was invited to attend. The workshop goal is to share with the astronomical community the extensive work that has been done by the outgoing Roman science investigation teams to provide scientific support for mission design activities. The workshop focuses on science with the Wide-Field Instrument, with a separate session about the coronagraph technology-demonstration instrument occurring in late October.
Roman is a NASA Astrophysics Observatory featuring a 2.4m near-infrared-optimized telescope with a wide-field survey instrument and a coronagraph technology-demonstration instrument. Roman is due to launch in the mid 2020s and will address many fundamental questions in the areas of cosmology, exoplanets, and infrared survey astrophysics. In 2015, NASA selected eleven science investigation teams, comprising over 300 people, that span a broad range of astrophysical subfields (including, e.g., cosmology, exoplanets, galaxy evolution, stellar populations, and archival research methods). These teams have contributed significantly to shaping the current mission design and operations concept. Their work is now complete, and new science opportunities will be solicited by NASA in early 2022.
The workshop starts with a project overview of the mission and its status, and the capabilities being developed by the mission’s science operations and support centers. Each science investigation team will then share their Roman-related activities and results, which include:
- Evaluation of science and calibration requirements and instrument performance.
- Design of notional observing programs.
- Development of data analysis techniques and software.
- Scientific simulations.
- Precursor observations.
By sharing this information, future science community activities will be able to leverage the knowledge and tools that have already been developed. The actual implementation of Roman’s core surveys remains to be defined through an open, community-driven process.
PRESENTATIONS
Monday, November 15
Mission Overview
Moderators: Russell Ryan, Max Mutchler
- Julie McEnery, Roman Mission Overview
- Josh Schlieder, Wide Field Instrument status and capabilities
- Harry Ferguson, Science Support at SOC/STScI
- Lee Armus, Science Support at SSC/IPAC
Studying the Milkyway with Roman
Chair: Jason Tumlinson; Moderators: Richard Cosentino, Andreea Petric
- Jason Tumlinson (JHU), Intro
- Emily Levesque (UW), Highly Evolved Stars with Roman
- Jessica Lu (Berkeley), Stars and Remnants with Roman Microlensing
- Aaron Dotter (CfA/Dartmouth), The MIST Stellar Models
- Jason Tumlinson & Anna Wright (JHU), Simulated Milky Way and Mock Data for Roman
- Roberta Paladini (IPAC), MW Disk Survey Concept and White Paper
Nearby Galaxies (WINGS)
Chair: Adrien Thob; Moderators: Russell Ryan, Max Mutchler
- Ben Williams, Roman Nearby Galaxies Science Overview
- Adrien Thob, The Roman Crowded Field Photometry Pipeline
- Leo Girardi, Stellar Models in the Roman Bands
- Martha Boyer, AGB Studies with Roman
- Anil Seth, Optimizing Roman Star Cluster Observations
- Eric Bell, The Roman Background and Stellar Halos
- Dave Sand, Characterizing Dwarf Satellite Galaxies with Roman
- Robyn Sanderson, Simulating Roman Star Catalogs
- Shifra Mandel, Finding Structures in Stellar Halos with Roman
- Chris Kervick, Measuring the Binary Star Separation Function With Roman
Tuesday, November 16
Exoplanet microlensing studies with the Roman Galactic Exoplanet Survey
Chair: Scott Gaudi; Moderators: Andreea Petric, Sebastian Gomez, Russell Ryan, Richard Cosentino
- Scott Gaudi, Introduction & Welcome
- David Bennett, Motivation for the RGES Survey and SIT
- Matthew Penny, Samson Johnson, Survey Yield and Optimization
- Geoff Bryden, The UKIRT Microlensing Survey
- Aparna Bhattacharya, Microlensing Mass Measurements
- Sebastiano Calchi-Novati, Roman Detector Simulations
- Radek Poleski, Jennifer Yee, Outreach and MulensModel
- Matthew Penny, Microlensing Data Challenge
- Scott Gaudi, Summary and Future Work
Exploiting Roman Data Archives
Chair: Marc Postman; Moderators: Richard Cosentino, Sebastian Gomez
- Marc Postman, Session Introduction
- Hayden Smotherman, Maximizing Science in Big Data Astronomy
- Gerard Lemson, Intro to SciServer
- Bridget Falck, Overview of Indra, a Peta-scale Suite of Cosmological Simulations
- Arik Mitschang, Use of the Spark Distributed Computing Engine to Enhance SciServer Capabilities
- Swara Ravindranath, Roman Space Telescope Grism simulation code on SciServer
- Ani Thakar, Summary
Wedneseday, November 17
Cosmology with the High Latitude Survey
Moderators: Carol Christian, Max Mutchler, Richard Cosentino
- Olivier Doré (JPL/Caltech), HLS introduction and SIT highlights
- Chris Hirata (OSU), HLS survey design
- Mike Jarvis (Penn), Heyang Long (OSU), Jahmour Givans (Princeton), Chien-Hao Lin (Duke), Masaya Yamamoto (Duke), Michael Troxel (Duke), Realistic image simulations: Framework, Applications, Products, and Joint simulations with Rubin
- Dan Masters, Shoubaneh Hemmati (Caltech/IPAC), Photometric redshift plans
- Yun Wang (Caltech/IPAC), HLS spectroscopic survey overview
- Zhongxu Zhai (Waterloo), Anahita Alavi, James Colbert (Caltech/IPAC), Roman HLSS: galaxy and grism simulations
- Heidi Wu (BSU), David Weinberg (OSU), Galaxy clusters cosmology
- Tim Eifler (UA), Vivian Miranda (Brookhaven), Elisabeth Krause (UA), Eric Huff (JPL), Pranjal Rajendra (UA), Jiachuan Xu (UCB), Lado Samushia (KSU), Alice Pisani (Princeton), Cosmological forecast status: Multi-probe inference; Next Gen Pipeline - Cocoa; 2D+3D ; Kinematic Lensing concept and overview; KL measurement with Keck and HST; KL with Roman; Higher-order statistics; Voids based cosmology
- Henry Gebhardt (JPL), Kris Pardo (JPL), Lukas Wenzl (Cornell) & Cyrille Doux (Penn), Shirley Ho (CCA, NYU), Bhuvnesh Jain (Penn), HLS research highlights: Novel clustering statistics for Roman; Measuring DM substructures with Roman; Synergies with Roman and CMB lensing from SO; Simulating Roman with ML; Roman and ML-based cosmology
Roman Detectors and Calibration
- Bernie Rauscher, Understanding Roman WFI Detectors and Calibration: Overview
- Stefano Casertano, Neil Zimmerman, Calibration working group activities
- Greg Mosby, Testing of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope’s H4RG-10s

