Nancy Grace Roman Could Detect Supermassive Dark Stars - by BrianKoberlein
Artist interpretation of a dark star. Credit: University of Utah
The Roman telescope is scheduled to be launched in May 2027. It will be a wide-field infrared telescope, well suited to explore the dim and distant edge of the cosmos. According to a recent paper published on the arxiv, Roman might be able to observe supermassive dark stars with masses greater than 100,000 Suns. But dark stars on this scale weren’t likely common. A better estimate is that dark stars were around 10,000 solar masses.
Their idea is to identify dark star candidates using Roman, with the understanding that the photometric observations won’t be able to distinguish dark stars from small young galaxies. One feature that distinguishes the galaxies from dark stars is that the latter should show a helium emission line known as ?1640, which Webb can detect. Roman is better suited for finding candidates, and Webb can confirm them.
If this approach is successful in the next decade, it could help astronomers understand a different cosmological mystery, that of supermassive black holes. We still don’t understand how such massive black holes could form so quickly in the early universe, but one idea is that they may have been seeded by these dark stars.
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