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C.K. Xu (California Institute of Technology), J. Donas (Laboratoire d'Astronomie Spatiale, Marseille, France), GALEX Science Team
The Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) is surveying the UV sky with unprecedented efficiency and very high sensitivity. It will eventually provide a uniform and complete picture of galaxy evolution in the UV domain since z=1. With a pyramid-like survey structure, the direct image surveys include an all sky survey (AIS) down to mAB~21, a medium depth survey (MIS) of 1000 deg2 down to mAB~23, a deep survey (DIS) of 100 deg2 down to mAB~25, and an ultra-deep survey (UIS) of 2 deg2 down to mAB~26. In this paper, we report the preliminary results on the source number counts in the two GALEX bands: the FUV (1550A) and the NUV (2200A). The scientific goals are: (1) to constrain the evolution models of UV galaxies; (2) to evaluate the cosmic variance of UV galaxies; (3) to estimate the contribution from galaxies to the cosmic background radiation in the UV bands; (4) to provide the calibrations for the UV luminosity functions. We will separate galaxies from stars, study various effects (e.g. spurious sources, Eddington bias, confusion noise, etc.) which can affect the completeness and the reliability of the counts, and compare our results to UV counts in the literature and to model predictions. GALEX (Galaxy Evolution Explorer) is a NASA Small Explorer, launched in April 2003. We gratefully acknowledge NASA's support for construction, operation, and science analysis for the GALEX mission. We also acknowledge the CNES and CNRS support for the French contribution to GALEX.
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Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 35#5
© 2003. The American Astronomical Soceity.