  UVCANDELS is a HST Cycle-26 Treasury Program awarded 164 orbits of primary
ultraviolet (UV) F275W imaging and coordinated parallel optical F435W imaging
in four CANDELS fields: GOODS-N, GOODS-S, EGS, and COSMOS, covering a total
area of $\sim426$ arcmin$^2$. This is $\sim2.7$ times larger than the area
covered by previous deep-field space UV data combined, reaching a depth of
about 27 and 28 ABmag ($5\sigma$ in $0.2"$ apertures) for F275W and F435W,
respectively. Along with the new photometric catalogs, we present an analysis
of the rest-frame UV luminosity function (LF), relying on our UV-optimized
aperture photometry method yielding a factor of $1.5\times$ increase than the
H-isophot aperture photometry in the signal-to-noise ratios of galaxies in our
F275W imaging. Using well tested photometric redshift measurements we identify
5810 galaxies at redshifts $0.6<z<1$, down to an absolute magnitude of
$M_\text{UV} = -14.2$. In order to minimize the effect of uncertainties in
estimating the completeness function, especially at the faint-end, we restrict
our analysis to sources above $30\%$ completeness, which provides a final
sample of 4726 galaxies at $-21.5<M_\text{UV}<-15.5$. We performed a maximum
likelihood estimate to derive the best-fit parameters of the UV LF. We report a
best-fit faint-end slope of $\alpha = -1.359^{+0.041}_{-0.041}$ at $z \sim
0.8$. Creating sub-samples at $z\sim0.7$ and $z\sim0.9$, we observe a possible
evolution of $\alpha$ with redshift. The unobscured UV luminosity density at
$M_\text{UV}<-10$ is derived as $\rho_\text{UV}=1.339^{+0.027}_{-0.030}\
(\times10^{26} \text{ergs/s/Hz/Mpc}^3)$ using our best-fit LF parameters. The
new F275W and F435 photometric catalogs from UVCANDELS have been made publicly
available on the Barbara A. Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes (MAST).
