Ultraviolet detection of very low-surface-brightness objects

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Abstract
The night-sky surface brightness at excellent ground-based sites is compared to the sky background in space. In directions typical of extragalactic pointings, the background in the space ultraviolet reaches μλ(2000 Å) = 26 mag arcsec-2, which is a factor of 40 darker than at any wavelength on the ground. This represents an important new "window" for the study of extragalactic systems with low surface brightnesses. The author finds that in certain favorable circumstances UV photometry may permit the detection of regions with equivalent V band surface brightnesses as low as 35 mag arcsec-2. He considers applications of UV surface photometry to the study of circumgalactic regions, dwarf galaxies, low-surface-brightness spirals, and the detection of primeval galaxies, and briefly discusses the usefulness of existing space instrumentation for such problems.

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