Sunday Supplement: Nancy Grace Roman Edition

It took some looking to find a short video of the launch, and honestly there were a lot of longer videos in which it was clear the talking heads were reading scripts with a lot of big words they didn't understand (yes, I'm looking at you, Fox News).

So here's a short one. If you want the full, nearly two-hour coverage, you can find it on C-SPAN here.

I can't resist this view from above.

Today's launch as seen from a chopper. pic.twitter.com/17cFMg3EtD

— Brian Hughes (@brianhughes) August 30, 2026

And a fancy artistic shot.

NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope transits our neighborhood star on its way to unlock the secrets of the universe 💫 pic.twitter.com/kd1d31aJ9e

— John Kraus (@johnkrausphotos) August 30, 2026

The Roman telescope is heading for the L2 point, which it will share with the James Webb Space Telescope. This video explains the Lagrange points. L2 is on the side of Earth opposite the Sun. A more technical explanation from Sixty Symbols (which I recommend for math content) is here.

You can get more information about the Roman telescope at this video. This one is only 7-plus minutes long, but there are lots more on YouTube.

Here's an interesting point: it's basically military surplus.

Beating swords into plowshares- NASA just launched a telescope whose 2.4-meter mirror was originally built to spy on Earth.

In 2012 the National Reconnaissance Office donated two unused Hubble-sized telescope assemblies that had been sitting in a warehouse after a canceled…

— Prof. Brian Keating (@Briankeating) August 30, 2026

The great thing about Roman is that it's essentially a wide-angle camera (all telescopes are essentially cameras), which means it will give us more data than we've ever had — something between 100 and 200 times as much. 

This isn't the only thing that's happened this week. I lived in California just long enough to decide I really don't like earthquakes. (At least you can hide from tornadoes.) But in Sicily they have an answer. Click through; there's a good story there.

Sicily has a four-legged early warning system for Mount Etna. It has a beard, it eats gorse, and it is beating several million euros of monitoring equipment by half a day.

The shepherds have known this for as long as anyone has kept goats on that mountain. The herd tells you. No… pic.twitter.com/kYKl08Jfgh

— Sama Hoole (@SamaHoole) August 21, 2026

This looks like an interesting game. I haven't tried it yet, but I plan to.

I built a world where you can change one rule and watch decades unfold.

Taxes. Religions, Riots. Citizens. Economies.

You intervene. The world reacts.

— Jason Zhao (@jzqcjz) August 28, 2026

Starship 40 is now on a floating cradle and on the way back to Starbase.

Ship 40 is resting safely on the deck. Look how tiny the crew looks next to this giant. https://t.co/FCPURBBD4s pic.twitter.com/bIKj00FL6C

— Lunar Citizen (@LunarCitizens) August 26, 2026

Let's finish up with a hero of science. I have written papers in graduate school that were published with my supervisor as the lead author, so I particularly feel for Jocelyn Bell Burnell.

A 24-year-old PhD student spent two years sledgehammering poles into a field outside Cambridge to build a radio telescope, then had to read what it printed out.

It produced about 100 feet of chart paper a day. She went through it by hand, looking for patterns in ink.

In… pic.twitter.com/xvtoz5qzUT

— Anish Moonka (@anishmoonka) August 30, 2026

Related:

• Last Friday's Sky Candy
• Last Sunday's Sunday Supplement

And that's it for this week. Don't forget to catch Sky Candy on Fridays, come back on Sunday for the Sunday Supplement, and keep your eyes on my feed here at PJ, I've got other stuff coming out this week.

Oh, and if I set up a gmail address for suggested stories, would anyone use it, or would it just become a spam can?