Diffuse UV Background: GALEX Results

Abstract

A bright UV GALEX image in the direction of a dense high galactic latitude interstellar dust cloud is examined to test (and to reject) the idea that a bright extragalactic UV background radiation field exists. A GALEX "Deep Imaging Survey" image of a second high latitude region (a region almost totally free of dust) shows a similar bright background, which, clearly, cannot be due to starlight scattered from interstellar dust. I speculate that the background is due to dark matter particles interacting with interstellar gas/dust nucleons.