TAUVEX - Tel Aviv University UV Explorer - A West Asia Space Telescope

TAUVEX - Tel Aviv University UV Explorer is a space telescope that is currently being built in Israel, to be flown on board the Russian international sattelite SRG - Spectrum Roentgen Gamma, in late 1995 or early 1996. TAUVEX is an imager in the near UV spectral window. Its major goal is to make a survey of about 10% of the UV sky, in the range λ = 1350 - 3500 Å. A successful operation of TAUVEX will partially fill an important gap in our recognition of the sky, namely the distribution and the nature of the celestial UV sources, which are still mostly unknown. TAUVEX will also operate as a fast multicolor photometer in its UV range of operation. TAUVEX is aligned in parallel to the common optical axix of all the other instruments on board SRG, most of which are telescopes and monitors for high energy radiation. SRG will be thus able to perform for the first time in history simultaneous astronomical observations in one and the same celestial body, that cover together 7 order of magnitude of the recorded radiation. The observations of TAUVEX can be greatly enhanced by ground base observations.