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PIA04280: GALEX 1st Light Far Ultraviolet
This image was taken May 21 and 22, 2003 by NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer. The image was made from data gathered by the far ultraviolet channel of the spacecraft camera during the mission's 'first light' milestone. It shows about 400 celestial objects
 Mission:  Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) 
 Spacecraft:  GALEX Orbiter
 Instrument:  GALEX Telescope 
 Product Size:  1450 x 1555 pixels (w x h) 
 Produced By:  California Institute of Technology 
 Full-Res TIFF:  PIA04280.tif (1.453 MB)
 Full-Res JPEG:  PIA04280.jpg (93.59 kB)  

Click on the image above to download a moderately sized image in JPEG format (possibly reduced in size from original)

Original Caption Released with Image:

This image was taken May 21 and 22 by NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer. The image was made from data gathered by the far ultraviolet channel of the spacecraft camera during the mission's "first light" milestone. It shows about 400 celestial objects, appearing in blue, detected over a 3-minute, 20-second period in the constellation Hercules.

The Galaxy Evolution Explorer's first light images are dedicated to the crew of the Space Shuttle Columbia. The Hercules region was directly above Columbia when it made its last contact with NASA Mission Control on February 1, over the skies of Texas.

The Galaxy Evolution Explorer launched on April 28 on a mission to map the celestial sky in the ultraviolet and determine the history of star formation in the universe over the last 10 billion years.

Image Credit:
NASA/JPL/Caltech

Image Addition Date:
2003-05-28