Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer

Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer (EUVE), U.S. satellite that operated from 1992 to 2001 and surveyed the sky for the first time in the extreme ultraviolet (EUV) region between 44 and 760 angstroms. (The extreme ultraviolet is defined to be between about 100 and 1,000 angstroms.) It had four telescopes with gold-plated mirrors, the design of which was critically dependent on the transmission properties of the filters used to define the EUV bandpasses. The combination of the mirrors and filters was selected to maximize the telescope’s sensitivity to detect faint EUV sources. Three of the telescopes had scanners that were pointed in the satellite’s spin plane. The fourth telescope, the Deep Survey/Spectrometer Telescope, was directed in an anti-Sun direction and had three spectrometers attached to it. EUVE detected 801 objects and observed the coronae of nearby stars such as Alpha Centauri. EUVE reentered Earth’s atmosphere on Jan. 30, 2002.