An Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Atlas of Local Starbursts and Star-Forming
  Galaxies: The Legacy of FOS and GHRS
  We present 46 rest-frame ultraviolet (UV) spectra of 28 local starburst and
star-forming galaxies which were observed with the Faint Object Spectrograph
(FOS) and the Goddard High Resolution Spectrograph (GHRS) of the Hubble Space
Telescope (HST) at a spectral resolution of a few 100 km/s. We compare the HST
spectra with lower resolution International Ultraviolet Explorer (IUE) spectra
of the same galaxies and find systematic differences: the bright star clusters
targeted in HST's ~1 arcsec apertures provide about 15% of the starburst
luminosity traced by IUE's 10 arcsec by 20 arcsec aperture; they are bluer and
have stronger stellar-wind features suggesting that the HST apertures have
preferentially been placed on the youngest areas of the burst. In contrast,
lines arising from the interstellar medium (ISM) show similar equivalent widths
in both the large and small aperture observations, suggesting similar ISM
properties from larger to smaller scales. In order to quantify the UV spectral
morphology of star-forming galaxies, we created a set of UV line indices
similar to the standard optical Lick indices. We discuss the relation between
the UV spectral morphology and the properties of the galaxy host. We present
our atlas of FOS and GHRS spectra both in print and electronically. The data
set is useful as a baseline for comparisons with observations of the rest-frame
UV spectra of star-forming galaxies at high redshift.
