I present an up-to-date description of the TAUVEX UV imager, constructed to
operate on the Spectrum X-Gamma international space observatory. The projected
performance and the expected scientific yield of TAUVEX are described.Comment: 4 pages, plain LaTex, invited contribution for the 7-th Asian-Pacific
  Regional Meeting of the IAU (August 19-23 1996 in Pusan, Korea), to be
  published in the Journal of the Korean Astronomical Societ

Brosch, Noah

English

arXiv

y ff. In this spectral region it is therefore possible to observe faint astronomical sources with a high signal-to-noise ratio with a modest telescope (O&apos;Connell 1987). The sources best studied with small aperture telescopes are QSOs and AGNs, that radiate significantly in the UV. Other sources of UV photons are hot stars of various types, the most interesting being white dwarfs and mixed-type binaries. Young, massive stars, that emit copious amounts of UV radiation and ionize the interstellar medium, are important in the context of star formation and evolution of galaxies; here the advantage of a wide-field imager is obvious. This has been demonstrated amply by the UIT instrument flown on the Space Shuttle (Stecher et al. 1992). The obvious advantages of TAUVEX here are reduced sky background, the longer observing time per target, and the long duration mission. In June 1991 it was proposed that TAUVEX be launched and operated from the Spectrum Rontgen-G

The TAUVEX UV Imager

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