Roman Coronagraph Focal Plane Mask

The focal plane mask for the Coronagraph Instrument on NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, shown here, is one of the components used to suppress starlight and reveal planets orbiting a star. Each circular section contains multiple "masks" – carefully engineered, opaque obstructions designed to block starlight. Some masks are about the width of a human hair.

The Roman Coronagraph Instrument was designed and is being built at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which manages the instrument for the agency. Contributions were made by ESA (the European Space Agency), the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), the French space agency Centre National d'Études Spatiales(CNES), and the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA) in Germany. Caltech, in Pasadena, California, manages JPL for NASA.

For more information about the Roman telescope, visit: https://roman.gsfc.nasa.gov/