In-Flight Performance and Preliminary Results from the Far Ultraviolet Space Telescope (Faust) Flown on ATLAS-1

Abstract

In 1992 March the Far Ultraviolet Space Telescope was flown as part of the NASA ATLAS-1 mission. We describe the in-flight instrument performance and provide a preliminary view of some of the results. Twenty-two wide-field far-ultraviolet images were obtained. At this stage of our analysis, we have far-ultraviolet photometry for more than 4800 sources; the overwhelming majority of these are below the TD-1 satellite far-ultraviolet detection limit. In these images, we detect sources to a flux limit of 1 × 10^-14 ergs s^-1 cm^-2 Å^-1, which is at least an order of magnitude more sensitive than the TD-1 satellite, and we have virtually complete source detections to a level of 6 × 10^-14 ergs s^-1 cm^-2 Å^-1. Among the sources detected, we have identified a subset which show substantial far-ultraviolet excess.