gPhoton: A Time Tagged Database of Calibrated GALEX UV Photon Events and the Science It Enables

GALEX was a NASA-funded, space-based ultraviolet telescope that conducted a sky survey covering ~77% of the sky in the far-UV and near-UV. The prime mission was active from 2003-2013 and reached various depths and numbers of repeat visits, avoiding the Galactic plane. gPhoton is a database of more than one trillion calibrated photon events from the imaging mode of the survey. The open source Python software allows users to query the database and construct images, timeseries of images, or timeseries aperture photometry at user-specified time bins down to the seconds-level anywhere GALEX has coverage. At STScI, our team has used gPhoton to study white dwarfs, subdwarf B stars, stellar flares, and our latest endeavor: an all-sky catalog of every object in GALEX that shows statistically significant variability within a single visit (i.e., within 10-30 minutes). In this presentation, I will briefly summarize the GALEX mission, showcase what the gPhoton software can do for you, and show the science results our team have been involved with such the project released itself as a MAST archive service in 2016.

Relevant publications for those interested in reading ahead:

https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2016ApJ...833..292M/abstract - main gPhoton paper
https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2017ApJ...845..171B/abstract - sdB stars (summer student lead)
https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2018ApJ...853..130D/abstract - "Tabby's star" (nothing relevant at very short cadence found)
https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2018MNRAS.475.4768T/abstract - white dwarf pulsations (summer student lead)
https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2019ApJ...883...88B/abstract - Kepler stellar flares that have simultaneous GALEX data