Bright-Moon Sky as a Wide-Field Linear Polarimetric Flat Source for Calibration

Next-generation wide-field optical polarimeters like the Wide-Area Linear Optical Polarimeters (WALOPs) have a field of view (FoV) of tens of arcminutes. For efficient and accurate calibration of these instruments, wide-field polarimetric flat sources will be essential. Currently, no established wide-field polarimetric standard or flat sources exist. This paper tests the feasibility of using the polarized sky patches of the size of around ten-by-ten arcminutes, at a distance of up to 20 degrees from the Moon, on bright-Moon nights as a wide-field linear polarimetric flat source. We observed 19 patches of the sky adjacent to the bright-Moon with the RoboPol instrument in the SDSS-r broadband filter. These were observed on five nights within two days of the full-Moon across two RoboPol observing seasons. We find that for 18 of the 19 patches, the uniformity in the measured normalized Stokes parameters $q$ and $u$ is within 0.2 %, with 12 patches exhibiting uniformity within 0.07 % or better for both $q$ and $u$ simultaneously, making them reliable and stable wide-field linear polarization flats. We demonstrate that the sky on bright-Moon nights is an excellent wide-field linear polarization flat source. Various combinations of the normalized Stokes parameters $q$ and $u$ can be obtained by choosing suitable locations of the sky patch with respect to the Moon