Extreme ultraviolet astronomy

Astronomical studies in the extreme ultraviolet (EW) band of the spectrum were dismissed during the early years of space astronomy as impossible, primarily because of the mistaken view that radiation in this band would be absorbed by the interstellar medium. Observations in the 1980s from sounding rockets and limited duration orbital spacecraft began to show the potential of this field and led to the deployment of two spacecraft devoted to EUV astronomy: the UK Wide Field Camera and the Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer. The instrumentation in these missions, although quite limited in comparison with instrumentation in other fields of space astronomy, provided unique and far-reaching results. These included new information on solar system topics, stellar chromospheres and corona, white dwarf astrophysics, cataclysmic variables, the interstellar medium, galaxies, and clusters of galaxies. We summarize these findings herein.