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Session 35 - Proposed Instruments and Programs.
Display session, Tuesday, June 09
The Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX), a recently selected NASA Small Explorer mission, will map the history and probe the causes of star formation over the redshift range 0 < z < 2. The mission will consist of five ultraviolet imaging and spectroscopic surveys of various depths and sky coverage, including all-sky and deep imaging surveys in two bands: Far UV (\sim1600Åand Near UV (\sim2500ÅImaging surveys will obtain an angular resolution of 3-5 arcseconds, better than 1 arcsecond positions and will detect more than 10^7 galaxies, 10^6 QSOs and millions of stellar objects. Three slitless grism spectroscopy surveys of increasing depth will provide for highly efficient measurement of redshifts and star formation rates, yielding 100,000 galaxy spectra in one year. The mission duration will be 28 months, with an anticipated launch in September 2001.
The GALEX science team will release survey object catalogs and images to the scientific community shortly after the conclusion of each survey. The total data set will require several terabytes of storage and specialized methods for efficient access and analysis. GALEX science also relies on establishing a link to digital catalogs at other wavelengths, most notably in the optical and IR. In this poster we describe the anticipated GALEX science data products, discuss methodologies for storage, retrieval and multi-wavelength analysis of survey objects, and explore the application of these methods towards the study of the star formation history of galaxies out to high redshift.
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Program listing for Tuesday