IN-FLIGHT PERFORMANCE AND PRELIMINARY-RESULTS FROM THE FAR-ULTRAVIOLET SPACE TELESCOPE (FAUST) FLOWN ON ATLAS-1

In 1992 March the Far Ultraviolet Space Telescope was flown as part of the NASA ATLAS-1 mission. We describe the in-flight instrument performance and provide a preliminary view of some of the results. Twenty-two wide-field far-ultraviolet images were obtained. At this stage of our analysis, we have far-ultraviolet photometry for more than 4800 sources; the overwhelming majority of these are below the TD-1 satellite far-ultraviolet detection limit. In these images, we detect sources to a flux limit of 1 X 10(-14) ergs s-1 cm-2 angstrom-1, which is at least an order of magnitude more sensitive than the TD-1 satellite, and we have virtually complete source detections to a level of 6 X 10(-14) ergs s-1 cm-2 angstrom-1. Among the sources detected, we have identified a subset which show substantial far-ultraviolet excess.