The GALEX, Galaxy Explorer, mission
was launched by a Pegasus-XL vehicle on April 28 2003 into
a 690km altitude, 29 degree inclination, circular orbit with a 98.6
minute period. The GALEX instrument allows imaging and spectroscopic
observations to be made in two ultraviolet bands,
Far UV (FUV) 1350-1780A and Near UV (NUV) 1770-2730A.
The instrument provides simultaneous co-aligned FUV and NUV
images with spatial resolution 4.3 and 5.3 arcseconds respectively.
Details of the performance of the instrument and detectors can be found in
Morrissey et al. (2007) ApJS, 173, 682.
The SkyView GALEX surveys mosaic the intensity images of
All-Sky Survey images. For a given pixel only the nearest image is used.
Since a given GALEX observation is circular, this maximizes the coverage
compared with default image finding algorithms which use the distance from
edge of the image.
As of February 10, 2011, SkyView uses the GALEX GR6 data release. Provenance: All data is downloaded from the
MAST GALEX archive.. This is a service of NASA HEASARC.
