The UltraViolet Sky


GALEX, the GALaxy Evolution eXplorer, performed the first extensive sky surveys at Ultraviolet wavelengths, filling the last gap so that our view of the sky is complete across the electromagnetic spectrum. The imaging surveys resulted in almost 600 million source measurements in two UV bands, far-UV and near-UV.

What are these UV sources? How many are Milky Way stars, galaxies and quasars? How are they distributed across the sky, and in color, magnitude, luminosity? How to extract samples of UV sources by astrophysical class? What peculiar classes of objects can be discovered from the UV surveys? The "UV sky" project seek to answer these questions. The project provides several science-enhanced catalogs of UV sources, as well as some model grids and tools to facilitate science exploitation of the GALEX UV surveys, alone and matched with surveys at other wavelengths.


  1. relevant publications describing GALEX data, surveys, catalogs, science tools
  2. GUVcat: GALEX UV source catalog enhanced with useful science tags

  3. GUVPNcat : Catalog of Planetary Nebulae Detected by GALEX and Corollary Optical Surveys

  4. GUVmatch_AISxGaiaDR2 : GUVcat_AIS matched to Gaia DR2

  5. GUVmatch_AISxSDSSdr14 : GUVcat_AIS matched to SDSS DR14

  6. AREAcat: compute sky coverage of major catalogs (GALEX, SDSS, PanSTARRS, Gaia) for your chosen area

  7. BCScat: (superseded by GUVcat) previous versions of UV source catalogs and matched UV-optical-IR catalogs
  8. Other catalogs: hot stars, QSOs, Magellanic Clouds, older catalogs