WILLIAMS BAY, Wis. — The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will soon send stellar images of the universe back to Earth. It's named after an astronomer who did her early research at Yerkes Observatory.
Nancy Grace Roman studied the stars for six years at Yerkes Observatory starting with her Ph.D. research at the University of Chicago. She later went on to become NASA's first chief astronomer and the main advocate for the Hubble Space Telescope before passing away in 2018.
"We found some of the glass plates she used and collected from the telescopes here," said Yerkes Observatory chief astronomer Dr. Amanda Bauer. "They helped her understand where stars lived in the Milky Way galaxy."
NASA will launch the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope Sunday morning, which is seen as the successor to the space telescope she once advocated for.
"What Hubble was able to do was amazing, but could only look at a little bit of the sky at a time," Bauer said. "Roman can look at 100 times that amount of sky in one single image."
The Great Refractor telescope Roman once used, which is more than a century old, remains Yerkes Observatory's centerpiece. The public can now regularly tour the dome and telescope since the observatory was given to a non-profit group by the University of Chicago in 2020.
The non-profit group is raising money to restore the facility and its instruments, including a vital piece of the Great Refractor.
"This is the finders' scope with its original brass finish," Bauer explained. "We're in the process of taking it back to its original state."
Yerkes Observatory is hosting its fall fundraiser on September 12.
NASA will launch the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope at precisely 6:26 a.m. on Sunday.
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