A Path to an All-Sky Survey with Roman
Abstract
A deep, space-based, all-sky near-infrared survey carried out with the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope would constitute a foundational astronomical infrastructure for decades to come. In this white paper, we present a concrete and feasible path to imaging the entire sky at resolution, beginning with high-impact fields in Cycle 1 and scaling to ultra-wide coverage within the nominal mission. This first-epoch survey will reach AB mag (5) and maximize synergies with contemporaneous observatories, while preserving substantial time for other ambitious Roman programs. We outline representative scheduling scenarios and an example Cycle 1 program that triples early Roman-LSST overlap and delivers high-value community data products such as LSST forced photometry, joint \textit{Gaia}-Roman astrometry, and catalogs of Galactic substructure, stong lenses, and other rare systems. The Cycle 1 program will lay the foundation for an eventual all-sky survey, while also delivering high-impact early science. We invite broad community participation in shaping and carrying out both the initial program and the long-term vision of an all-sky Roman survey.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2602.21280,
title = {A Path to an All-Sky Survey with Roman},
author = {Jiwon Jesse Han and Anirudh Chiti and Kai-Feng Chen and Keith Bechtol and Andrea Bellini and Robert Benjamin and Adam Bolton and Ana Bonaca and Alex Broughton and Esra Bulbul and Susan Clark and Charlie Conroy and Suchetha Cooray and John Franklin Crenshaw and Tansu Daylan and Arjun Dey and Alex Drlica-Wagner and Tim Eifler and Kareem El-Badry and Richard M. Feder and Peter Ferguson and Shenming Fu and Sebastian Gomez and Ryan Hickox and Christopher Hirata and Easton J. Honaker and Xiaosheng Huang and Alexander P. Ji and Michael Liu and Kevin A. McKinnon and Geoffrey Mo and Burcin Mutlu-Pakdil and Adrian M. Price-Whelan and Alessandro Savino and David J. Schlegel and Nora Shipp and Jay Strader and Federica Tarsitano and Adrien C. R. Thob and Kim-Vy Tran and Roeland P. van der Marel and Feige Wang and Risa Wechsler and Daniel R. Weisz and Dennis Zaritsky and Tianqing Zhang and Shreya Anand and Amirnezam Amiri and Abhijeet Anand and Matthew L. N. Ashby and Finian Ashmead and Leandro Beraldo e Silva and Aliza Beverage and Michael R. Blanton and Warren R. Brown and Anthony G. A. Brown and Priyanka Chakraborty and Yi-Kuan Chiang and Jose M. Diego and Denis Erkal and Simone Ferraro and Lluís Galbany and Marla Geha and Oleg Y. Gnedin and Lars Hernquist and Jason A. S. Hunt and Valentin D. Ivanov and Venu Kalari and Nitya Kallivayalil and András Kovács and Kyle Kremer and Ting-Wen Lan and Denis Leahy and Jiaxuan Li and Ivan Minchev and GyuChul Myung and Ethan O. Nadler and Joan R. Najita and Melissa K. Ness and Jacob Nibauer and Fabio Pacucci and David Parkinson and Ekta Patel and R. Michael Rich and Marina Ricci and Graziano Rossi and Nikolina Sarcevic and Arnab Sarkar and Andrew K. Saydjari and Arman Shafieloo and Zachary Slepian and Sangmo Tony Sohn and David N. Spergel and Róbert Szabó and Christina C. Williams and John F. Wu},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2602.21280},
year = {2026}
}
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