Hubble to aid Roman Space Telescope's gravitational lensing work

The Hubble Space Telescope will conduct preparatory observations of individual gravitational lenses to help the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope account for its point-spread function. Roman's High Latitude Wide Area Survey is expected to detect about 160,000 strong lenses, but only around 500 will have enough signal-to-noise for detailed substructure analysis.

• Roman should detect about 160,000 strong lenses in the ~5,000 sq deg HLWAS survey
• Only ~500 lenses will have sufficient signal-to-noise for substructure study
• Roman's field of view is 200 times larger than Hubble's, complicating PSF handling
• Hubble will also perform follow-up imaging of lenses Roman discovers