Three-dimensional Scene Reconstruction Using Roman Slitless Spectra

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will carry out a wide-field imaging and slitless spectroscopic survey of Type Ia supernovae to improve our understanding of dark energy. Crucial to this endeavor is obtaining supernova spectra uncontaminated by light from their host galaxies. However, obtaining...

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Bibliographic Details
Authors: Astraatmadja, Tri L., Fruchter, Andrew S., Deustua, Susana E., Qu, Helen, Sako, Masao, Ryan, Russell E., Copin, Y., Aldering, Greg, Hounsell, Rebekah A., Rubin, David, Galbany, Lluís, Perlmutter, Saul, Rose, Benjamin M.
Format: article
Status:Published version
Publication Date:2026
Country:España
Institution:Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC)
Repository:DIGITAL.CSIC. Repositorio Institucional del CSIC
OAI Identifier:oai:dnet:digitalcsic_::aa0baaef978e774b8ad01939acd6631c
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/10261/432345
https://api.elsevier.com/content/abstract/scopus_id/105034341711
Access Level:Open access
Keyword:Type Ia supernovae
Infrared spectroscopy
Astronomical simulations
Astronomy data analysis
Description
Summary:The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will carry out a wide-field imaging and slitless spectroscopic survey of Type Ia supernovae to improve our understanding of dark energy. Crucial to this endeavor is obtaining supernova spectra uncontaminated by light from their host galaxies. However, obtaining such spectra is made more difficult by the inherent problem in wide-field slitless spectroscopic surveys: the blending of spectra of close objects. The spectrum of a supernova will blend with the host galaxy, even from regions distant from the supernova on the sky. If not properly removed, this contamination will introduce systematic bias when the supernova spectra are later used to determine intrinsic supernova parameters and to infer the parameters of dark energy. To address this problem, we developed an algorithm that makes use of the spectroscopic observations of the host galaxy at all available observatory roll angles to reconstruct a 3D (2D spatial, 1D spectral) representation of the underlying host galaxy that accurately matches the 2D slitless spectrum of the host galaxy when projected to an arbitrary rotation angle. We call this “scene reconstruction.” The projection of the reconstructed scene can be subtracted from an observation of a supernova to remove the contamination from the underlying host. Using simulated Roman data, we show that our method has extremely small systematic errors and significantly less random noise than if we subtracted a single perfectly aligned spectrum of the host obtained before or after the supernova was visible.