This illustration shows the relative scale of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope and a Tyrannosaurus rex. Roman is over 42 feet (12.7 meters) long โ about the length of a T. rex โ and over 14 feet (4.4 meters) wide when fully deployed. Roman also weighs around 18,000 pounds, or 8,000 kilograms (dry mass), which is the approximate mass of a T. rex as well.
Did you know NASAโs Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is both roughly as long and as massive as a Tyrannosaurus rex? This observatory, which will move to the launch site at NASAโs Kennedy Space Center in Florida very soon, is over 42 feet (12.7 meters) long and weighs around 18,000 pounds (8,000 kilograms), not including the fuel. Letโs explore some of the components that bring Roman to T. rex proportions.
Artist's concepts of NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope (left) and NASA's Hubble Space Telescope (right), highlighting the 7.9-foot (2.4-meter) primary mirrors that sit in the heart of each observatory.
At the observatoryโs heart sits a mirror thatโs 7.9 feet (2.4 meters) across and 410 pounds (186 kilograms), or about the length and weight of a protoceratops! Romanโs primary mirror is the same size as the Hubble Space Telescopeโs main mirror, but less than one-fourth the weight thanks to major improvements in technology.
Technicians installed Romanโs primary instrument, the Wide Field Instrument (pictured at left), in the fall of 2025.
The missionโs 300-megapixel infrared camera, called the Wide Field Instrument, is over 8 feet (about 2.5 meters) tall, which is about the length of a triceratops skull. It will give Roman the same angular resolution as Hubble while capturing an area of sky at least 100 times larger. The mission will gather data up to 1,000 times faster than Hubble.
Its sweeping cosmic surveys will help scientists discover new information about planets beyond our solar system, untangle mysteries like dark energy, and map how both normal matter and dark matter are structured and distributed throughout the universe. Casting such a wide, deep โnetโ into space will give astronomers plenty of cosmic bycatch as well; Romanโs crisp, panoramic views will offer practically limitless opportunities for astronomers to do all kinds of exciting science.
The Coronagraph Instrument was installed on Romanโs instrument carrier in October 2024.
Romanโs Coronagraph Instrument is about as wide (5.5 feet, or 1.7 meters) as a velociraptor is long. The Coronagraph is designed to demonstrate new technologies for directly imaging planets around other stars. It will block the glare from a star and make it possible for scientists to see the faint reflected light from planets in orbit around them.
The Coronagraph aims to photograph worlds and dusty disks around nearby stars in visible light to help us see giant worlds that are older, colder, and in closer orbits than the hot, young super-Jupiters direct imaging has mainly revealed so far.
This photo shows Romanโs 18 detectors, which are the heart of the missionโs 300-megapixel camera.
Romanโs โeyes,โ 18 saltine cracker-sized detectors in its primary instrument, are each about as tall as an allosaurus tooth. They each have about 16.8 million tiny pixels for a total of 300 million, which means Romanโs images will be super hi-res. Each detector is made of millions of mercury-cadmium-telluride photodiodes (sensors that convert light into an electrical current), one for each pixel.
Principal technician Billy Keim installs a cover plate over Romanโs detectors.
The detectors are secured to a silicon electronics board that will help process the light signals using indium, a soft metal that has roughly the same consistency as chewing gum. Together, these ultra-sensitive detectors can capture vast areas of sky in a single shot while still revealing incredibly fine detail, allowing Roman to map the cosmos faster and more precisely than ever before.
Romanโs electrical wiring was installed on the spacecraft flight structure in the summer of 2023.
There are 1,000 pounds, or 450 kilograms, (the weight of a pachycephalosaurus) of electrical cabling, made up of about 32,000 wires and 900 connectors, laced throughout the observatory. If the wires were laid out end-to-end they would span 45 miles โ nearly enough to trace the entire perimeter fence in the imagined Jurassic Park! Functioning as the Romanโs โnervous system,โ the cabling enables different parts of the observatory to communicate with one another, provides power, and helps the central computer monitor the observatoryโs function.
The Roman observatory was fully integrated on Nov. 25, 2025, at NASAโs Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
Romanโs six solar panels each measure about 7 by 10 feet (2 by 3 meters), collectively giving Roman a โwingspanโ similar to a pteranodonโs! Together, they will provide a total of 4 kilowatts of power, which is about the same rate that a modest rooftop solar panel system produces during the daytime.
Over the course of two days in June 2025, eight technicians installed Romanโs solar panels onto the outer portion of the observatory.
The panels are covered in a total of 3,902 solar cells that will convert sunlight directly into electricity much like plants convert sunlight to chemical energy. When tiny bits of light, called photons, strike the cells, some of their energy transfers to electrons within the material. This jolt excites the electrons, which start moving more or jump to higher energy levels. In a solar cell, excited electrons create electricity by breaking free and moving through a circuit, sort of like water flowing through a pipe. The panels are designed to channel that energy to power the observatory.
Romanโs high-gain antenna will provide the primary communication link between the spacecraft and the ground.
The radio dish that will send data across a million miles of intervening space back to Earth spans 5.6 feet (1.7 meters) in diameter. Thatโs about the size of the largest known dinosaur footprints, yet it weighs only 24 pounds (10.9 kilograms). Its large size will help Roman send radio signals across a million miles of intervening space to Earth. The dual-band antenna will use one frequency band to receive commands and send back information about the spacecraftโs health and location. It will use another frequency band to transmit a deluge of data at up to 500 megabits per second.
Weโre only a few months out from launch, and so close to a completely new understanding of the universe and our place within it. Follow along with Romanโs road to launch at nasa.gov/roman, and virtually tour the Roman observatory here.
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Hic locus est ubi mors gaudet succurrere vitae.โ
The air here does not ask for laughter. It asks for listening.
Not the kind done with ears, but the kind done with memory.
Cemeteries are strange gardens. Stone flowers. Names weathered by rain. Entire lives reduced to a dash between two dates, yet somehow those silent markers speak louder than crowded rooms ever do.
Let conversations cease. Because some places are too sacred for noise.
Let laughter flee. Not out of fear, but reverence. There is a softness in grief that loudness bruises.
And then the final line, cold as cathedral marble:
โThis is a place where death delights in helping life.โ
The dead no longer hurry. They no longer chase approval, money, beauty, or tomorrow. Yet standing among them, the living suddenly remember how precious breath is. Death becomes a mirror polished by time itself. Maybe that is the secret language of cemeteries, not despair, but perspective. A place where endings tutor the living on how to begin again.
MORGAGNI, GIOVANNI BATTISTA (1682-1771).ย Opuscula miscellanea quorum non pauca nunc primum prodeunt, tres in partes divisaย [Miscellaneous works, some of which are new, divided into three parts]. Printed by Giovanni Antonio Remondini at Remondiniana, Bassano del Grappa, 1763. Three volumes bound together. 39 cm tall.
This month we highlight a book currently receiving treatment from the UI Libraries Conservation and Collections Care. Collections Conservator, Beth Stone, is working to clean and stabilize one of our books fromย Giovanni Battista Morgagniย (1682-1771).
Morgagniย was an 18th-century Italian anatomist and physician. He is referred to as the "father" of modern pathologic anatomy. He stressed connecting the symptoms observed in the sick to the findings from their dissection. Symptoms, he felt, were "the cry of the suffering organs." His work helped dispel the longstanding notion that most diseases were scattered throughout the body. Instead, he was able to demonstrate that they emerge from specific organs and tissues.
During his very long life, Morgagni was a prodigious worker and prolific writer. His three-volumeย Adversaria Anatomicaย (1706-1717) put him on the map. His most monumental work,ย De sedibus, et causis morborum per anatomen indagatis libri quinque, was published in 1761 and made him a legend among anatomists. Vast in scope, it is one of the most fundamentally important works in the history of medicine.
The book this month, however, is Morgagni'sย Opuscula miscellanea quorum non pauca nunc primum prodeunt, tres in partes divisaย [Miscellaneous works, some of which are new, divided into three parts]. As stated in the title, this is a collection of writings on a variety of subjects, including letters toย Giovanni Lancisi, an Italian physician, discussing how Cleopatra died.
Morgagni's scholarly ability was apparent at an early age. At sixteen he was a pupil ofย Antonio Maria Valsalvaย at Bologna, and there he received the stimulus to devote his life to pathology. While pursuing postgraduate studies, he worked withย Giovanni Santoriniย performing dissections. (Giovanni was clearly a very popular name at this time!)
By 1715 he took the chair of anatomy at Padua, a seat which he held with utmost distinction for many years. He was a brilliant and tireless investigator and, in addition to his work in medicine and anatomy, was a student of the classics and an archaeologist of repute.
Over his long career at the University of Padua, he taught thousands of students from dozens of countries. His teaching emphasized empirical data, direct observation, and experimentation.
Among several other structures, his name is most widely connected with the "Columns of Morgagni," the fine, vertical folds of the anal canal.
As mentioned, if he was not teaching or dissecting, Morgagni was writing.ย Opuscula miscellaneaย shows his range and diverse interests. Along with discussing Cleopatra's cause of death, it includes a biography of his mentor, Valsalva, a tract on gallstones, and a few more on legal issues.
Opuscula miscellaneaย has a lovely, soft paper cover. The cover shows the effects of age, use, and exposure to the environment, with scuffs, stains, and an overall darkening. Do not let that fool you, though, as this is still an effective binding. With a new housing from Conservation,ย Opuscula miscellaneaย will be around for a very long time.
Goย hereย to read about Bethโs treatment forย Opuscula miscellaneaย and more.
The annual JMRBR open house isย April 20, from 4-7 pm. This is our first in-person event in quite some time and we'd love to see you there!
โFuture eye seeing now', 2020, is a glass sphere appears to contain an eye. The image, a photograph of Olafurโs own eye, was applied to the back of the sphere, so that the eye appears to change and become distorted to viewers moving around the work (photo: Jens Ziehe).โ
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