Roman Observations Time Allocation Committee: Final Report and Recommendations

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is poised to revolutionize our scientific understanding of exoplanets, dark matter, dark energy, and general astrophysics, including through an innovative community approach to defining and executing sky surveys.

The Roman Observations Time Allocation Committee (ROTAC) was convened to recommend time allocations for the three Core Community Surveys (CCS) using the Wide Field Instrument (WFI): the High Latitude Wide Area Survey, the High Latitude Time Domain Survey, and the Galactic Bulge Time Domain Survey, as well as balance the time allocation for the General Astrophysics Surveys.

Each CCS had a corresponding Definition Committee that collected community input and designed proposals for a nominal (in-guide) survey, as well as underguide and overguide options with smaller and larger time allocations, respectively. These options explored different ways of fulfilling the mission science requirements while maximizing general astrophysics science goals enabled by the surveys.

In this report, the ROTAC lays out its recommendations for the three CCS observing designs and the WFI time allotment for CCS (74.5%) and the General Astrophysics Surveys (25.5%).

Roman Observations Time Allocation Committee, Core Community Survey Definition Committees

Comments: Report released in late April (link)
Subjects: Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM); Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics (astro-ph.CO); Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP); Astrophysics of Galaxies (astro-ph.GA); High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena (astro-ph.HE); Solar and Stellar Astrophysics (astro-ph.SR)
Cite as: arXiv:2505.10574 [astro-ph.IM] (or arXiv:2505.10574v1 [astro-ph.IM] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2505.10574
Focus to learn more
Submission history
From: Gail Zasowski
[v1] Tue, 13 May 2025 20:40:37 UTC (21,213 KB)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.10574
Astrobiology,