Related papers: The Thomson Surface. II. Polarization
We calculate the detectability of the polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) as a function of the sky coverage, angular resolution, and instrumental sensitivity for a hypothetical experiment. We consider the gradient…
Specularly reflected light, or glint, from an ocean surface may provide a useful observational tool for studying extrasolar terrestrial planets. Detection of sea-surface glints would differentiate ocean-bearing terrestrial planets, i.e.…
X-ray astronomy allows study of objects which may be associated with compact objects, i.e. neutron stars or black holes, and also may contain strong magnetic fields. Such objects are categorically non-spherical, and likely non-circular when…
There is an ongoing debate about the origin and even the very existence of a high degree of linear polarization of some chromospheric spectral lines observed in solar flares. The standard explanation of these measurements is in terms of the…
X-ray Thomson scattering is being developed as a method to measure the temperature, electron density, and ionization state of high energy density plasmas such as those used in inertial confinement fusion. Most experiments are currently done…
In order to study the solar corona during eclipses, a new telescope was constructed. Three coronal images were obtained simultaneously from one objective of the telescope as the coronal radiation passed through three polarisers (whose…
Polarimetric radio observations of the Sun can provide rich information about emission mechanisms and the propagation medium. For the past five decades, solar polarimetric studies at low radio frequencies have almost always assumed the…
Low-frequency (80-240 MHz) radio observations of the solar corona are presented using the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA), and several discoveries are reported. The corona is reviewed, followed by chapters on Type III bursts and…
The observations of the solar F-corona from space are reviewed emphasizing the 25 years of continuous monitoring achieved by the LASCO-C2 and C3 coronagraphs. Our work includes images obtained by the Clementine cameras, and the…
The region of the second ionization of helium in the Sun is a narrow layer near the surface. Ionization induces a local change of the adiabatic exponent $\Gamma_1$, which produces a characteristic signature in the frequencies of p-modes. By…
We present new calculations of X-ray polarization from accreting black holes (BHs), using a Monte-Carlo ray-tracing code in full general relativity. In our model, an optically thick disk in the BH equatorial plane produces thermal seed…
This work is devoted to the study of solar light that experiences single and multiple scattering in the atmosphere at the twilight time. The work is based on polarimetric observations of the twilight sky that were conducted in 1997 and 2000…
Birmingham Solar Oscillations Network (BiSON) instruments use resonant scattering spectrometers to make unresolved Doppler velocity observations of the Sun. Unresolved measurements are not homogenous across the solar disc and so the…
Polarization is a powerful remote-sensing method to investigate solar system bodies. It is an especially sensitive diagnostic tool to reveal physical properties of the bodies whose observational characteristics are governed by small…
A new source in solar corona scattering photospheric and chromospheric Fraunhofer spectral lines is detected below a height of one solar radius above solar limb, consisting of tenuous and cool neutral atoms and much fewer once ionized ions.…
Interference between magnetic substates of the hyperfine structure states belonging to different fine structure states of the same term influences the polarization for some of the diagnostically important lines of the Sun's spectrum, like…
There is a thin transition region (TR) in the solar atmosphere where the temperature rises from 10,000 K in the chromosphere to millions of degrees in the corona. Little is known about the mechanisms that dominate this enigmatic region…
We study linear polarization due to scattering of light on a cloudlet of particles, taking into account the radiation drag and the gravitational pull exerted on them by a central body. Effects of special and general relativity are included…
Initially unpolarized solar radiation becomes polarized by scattering in the Earth's atmosphere. In particular molecular scattering polarizes electromagnetic radiation, but also scattering of radiation at aerosols, cloud droplets and ice…
The polarization of the cosmic microwave background radiation will have a distribution of singularities and anti-singularities, points where the polarization vanishes for topological reasons. The statistics of polarization singularities…