NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is moving toward the Lagrangian point L2, about 1.6 million miles (1.6 million kilometers) from Earth, where it will begin studying the universe.

On August 30, NASA released the space telescope’s first images of a star cluster, even though Roman’s 300-megapixel camera had not yet been fully calibrated. The early image shows a blurred green circle, but the telescope’s final images are expected to be far sharper.

Once Roman’s wide-field instrument is fully operational, it should produce images as sharp as those from the Hubble Space Telescope. However, each image will cover 100 times more sky, NASA said. Scientists hope these observations will reveal more about dark energy and potentially help identify habitable exoplanets.

Readers are most excited about habitable exoplanets

Following the release of Roman’s first test images, we asked readers what they were most excited to see from the new space telescope.

More than 270 readers responded. The largest voting group, 57%, selected “habitable exoplanets.”

“There is a significant amount of life in our solar system and in its habitable zone, but if there was any life on these planets, no space telescope would be able to detect any signs.”

Dark energy is another major area of interest

The next-largest group, 27% of readers, selected “possible sources of dark energy.” One reader explained their interest:

“Dark matter and dark energy appear to make up a large part of our universe, so it seems essential to know at least something about them, other than that they exist.”

Another reader emphasized that dark energy and dark matter make up the majority of the universe’s mass according to current knowledge, while scientists still do not know exactly what they are or how they affect the universe.

“This is a huge gap in our knowledge base. It’s not something we just need to know, it’s something we need to know before we go where no human has gone before.”

Some readers simply want Roman’s images as wallpapers

The smallest voting group, representing 9% of respondents, selected “I don’t know, but I’ll use that photo as my desktop wallpaper.” For more space imagery, explore this week’s space photo and the Earth seen from space series for images to use across your devices.