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Allen’s Astrophysical Quantities pp 169–182Cite as

Ultraviolet Astronomy

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Abstract

The Earth’s atmosphere is an efficient absorber of ultraviolet radiation, and so astronomical observations in this wavelength regime are pretty well limited to space-based instruments. As such, I adopt the nomenclature that “ultraviolet” refers to the wavelengths in the region from the atmospheric cutoff at ≈ 3 200 A down to 100 Å. (The terms “far ultraviolet” and “extreme ultraviolet” are frequently used to refer to the shorter end of the ultraviolet wavelength range, but the usage has not been consistent in the literature. Generally one thinks of the far ultraviolet as referring to wavelengths shorter than that of the Lyman limit at 912 Å, and the extreme ultraviolet as being the region between 912 and 100 Å.) Note that wavelengths given in this chapter will always be vacuum ones. In the past ultraviolet wavelengths shorter than 2 000 Å were expressed as vacuum values, while those longward of this were given with regard to wavelengths in air. This convention has been continued in the International Ultraviolet Explorer (IUE) Project, but is currently being changed in their newest pipeline processing system, and eventually the entire archive will make use of only vacuum wavelengths. Newer missions such as the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer (EUVE) are using vacuum wave-lengths exclusively. This practice conforms to Resolution C15 of the 21st General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union. Equation (8.1) is the algorithm for calculating the index of refraction (n) of standard air as a function of vacuum wavelength. This algorithm was derived by Edlen [1], and was the one officially adopted by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) [2].

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Authors
  1. Terry J. Teays
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Theoretical Division, Los Alamos National Laboratory MS B288, P.O. Box 1663, Los Alamos, NM, 87545, USA

    Arthur N. Cox

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Teays, T.J. (2002). Ultraviolet Astronomy. In: Cox, A.N. (eds) Allen’s Astrophysical Quantities. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-1186-0_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-1186-0_8

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