An Atlas of Hubble Space Telescope Ultraviolet Images of Nearby Galaxies

Abstract

We present an atlas of UV ($\sim 2300$ \AA) images, obtained with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Faint Object Camera, of the central $22''\times 22''$ of 110 galaxies. The observed galaxies are an unbiased selection constituting about one half of a complete sample of all large ($D>6'$) and nearby ($V< 2000$ km s$^{-1}$) galaxies. This is the first extensive UV imaging survey of normal galaxies. The data are useful for studying star formation, low-level nuclear activity, and UV emission by evolved stellar populations in galaxies. At the HST resolution ($\sim 0.05''$), the images display an assortment of morphologies and UV brightnesses. These include bright nuclear point sources, compact young star clusters scattered in the field or arranged in circumnuclear rings, centrally-peaked diffuse light distributions, and galaxies with weak or undetected UV emission. We measure the integrated $\sim 2300$ \AA\ flux in each image, classify the UV morphology, and examine trends between these parameters and the optical properties of the galaxies.