AN ATLAS OF HUBBLE-SPACE-TELESCOPE ULTRAVIOLET IMAGES OF NEARBY GALAXIES

We present an atlas of UV (similar to 2300 Angstrom) images, obtained with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Faint Object Camera, of the cent ral 22 '' x 22 '' of 110 galaxies. The observed galaxies are an unbias ed selection constituting about one-half of a complete sample of all l arge (D > 6') and nearby (V < 2000 km s(-1)) galaxies. This is the fir st extensive UV imaging survey of normal galaxies. The data are useful for studying star formation, low-level nuclear activity, and UV emiss ion by evolved stellar populations in galaxies. At the HST resolution (similar to 0.05 ''), the images display an assortment of morphologies and UV brightnesses. These include bright nuclear point sources, comp act young star clusters scattered in the field or arranged in circumnu clear rings, centrally peaked diffuse light distributions, and galaxie s with weak or undetected UV emission. We measure the integrated simil ar to 2300 Angstrom flux in each image, classify the UV morphology, an d examine trends between these parameters and the optical properties o f the galaxies.