An HST Wide-field Survey of the Galactic Bulge: Overview, Strategy, and First Results
Abstract We present a Hubble Space Telescope (HST) imaging survey of a 1.1 deg 2 sky area toward the Milky Way Galactic bulge. This field significantly overlaps with the upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Galactic Bulge Time Domain Survey. High angular resolution imaging of this area with HST before the start of the Roman Galactic Exoplanet Survey will greatly strengthen Roman’s ability to characterize detected exoplanet systems, as well as provide a rich and wide-field archive for use as a legacy dataset toward the Galactic bulge for the broader community. We conduct coordinated parallel imaging with both wide-field cameras on HST, the Wide Field Camera 3 and Advanced Camera for Surveys, utilizing the F606W and F814W passbands. Approximately 70% of the survey was conducted during HST Cycle 32, with the remaining 30% conducted during Cycle 33. In this Letter, the first in a series, we give a general overview of the program and the observing strategy and present early results. This campaign secures HST’s lasting impact on the high-precision study of stellar populations, dynamics, exoplanet systems, interstellar extinction, metallicities, cluster associations, and more toward the center of our Galaxy.
Authors
- Macy Huston (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4591-3201)
- Natalia E. Rektsini (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1530-4870)
- Joel Green
- Jean-Philippe Beaulieu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0014-3354)
- Matthew T. Penny (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7506-5640)
- Sean K. Terry (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5029-3257)
- Carolina Rodriguez Sanchez-Vahamonde (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0390-5054)
- B. Scott Gaudi (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0395-9869)
- Charles A. Beichman (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5627-5471)
- Ray A. Lucas (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1581-7825)
- David P. Bennett (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8043-8413)
- Aparna Bhattacharya
- Jay Anderson (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2861-3995)
- Aikaterini Vandorou (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9881-4760)
- Jessica R. Lu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9611-0009)
- David M. Nataf (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5825-4431)
Institutions
- Louisiana State University (US)
- University of Iowa (US)
- Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (FR)
- Space Telescope Science Institute (US)
- University of Tasmania (AU)
- Goddard Space Flight Center (US)
- Jet Propulsion Laboratory (US)
- NASA Exoplanet Science Institute (US)
- Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris (FR)
- Sorbonne Université (FR)
- Université Bourgogne Franche-Comté (FR)
- The Ohio State University (US)
- University of Maryland, College Park (US)
- University of California, Berkeley (US)
Publication Details
- Journal
- The Astrophysical Journal Letters
- Published
- 2026-05-11
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/ae53e8
- Primary Topic
- Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00
Funders
- Space Telescope Science Institute