Related papers: The Thomson Surface. II. Polarization
The near-Earth space weather is driven by the quick release of magnetic free energy in the solar corona. Probing this extremely hot and rarified region of the extended solar atmosphere requires modeling the polarization of forbidden and…
Space-borne low-to medium-resolution (R~10^2-10^3) transmission spectroscopy of atmospheres detect the broadest spectral features (alkali doublets, molecular bands, scattering), while high-resolution (R~10^5), ground-based observations…
This paper considers the problem of modeling the light polarization that emerges from an astrophysical plasma composed of atoms whose excitation state is significantly influenced by the anisotropy of the incident radiation field. In…
The origin of the heliospheric magnetic flux on the Sun, and hence the origin of the solar wind, is a topic of hot debate.While the prevailing view is that the solar wind originates from outside coronal streamer helmets, there also exists…
Energetic X-ray radiations emitted from various accretion systems are widely considered to be produced by Comptonization in the hot corona. The corona and its interaction with the disc play an essential role in the evolution of the system…
We point out some advantages of making observations of extrasolar planets in linearly polarized (LP) light. Older cool stars have quite low levels (~ 10^-4 to 10^-5) of fractional LP, while extrasolar planets can have relatively high…
We present a formalism for analyzing a full-sky temperature and polarization map of the cosmic microwave background. Temperature maps are analyzed by expanding over the set of spherical harmonics to give multipole moments of the two-point…
EUV images of Comet Lovejoy (C/2011 W3) from the AIA show striations related to the magnetic field structure in both open and closed magnetic regions. The brightness contrast implies coronal density contrasts of at least a factor of 6…
Bow shocks and related density enhancements produced by the winds of massive stars moving through the interstellar medium provide important information regarding the motions of the stars, the properties of their stellar winds, and the…
The Doppler shifts of optical emission lines which have been scattered by surrounding dust and electrons can provide useful information about the kinematics, geometry and physical conditions of astrophysical flows. In principle, the…
Nonlinear Thomson scattering of an electron motion in a combining field constituted by an elliptically polarized laser and a background magnetic field is investigated. The dependence of the electron trajectories, the fundamental frequency,…
The Wide-field Imager for Parker Solar Probe (WISPR) captures unprecedented white-light images of the solar corona and inner heliosphere. Thanks to the uniqueness of Parker Solar Probe's (PSP) orbit, WISPR is able to image ``locally''…
The characterization of the polarimetric properties of the planet Earth is important for the interpretation of expected observations and the planning of future instruments. We present a multi-wavelengths and multi-phase set of benchmark…
The circular polarization of light that planets reflect is often neglected because it is very small compared to the linear polarization. It could, however, provide information on a planet's atmosphere and surface, and on the presence of…
Heliospheric imagers offer the promise of remote sensing of large-scale structures present in the solar wind. The STEREO/HI-2 imagers, in particular, offer high resolution, very low noise observations of the inner heliosphere but have not…
Planets reflect and linearly polarize the radiation that they receive from their host stars. The emergent polarization is sensitive to aspects of the planet atmosphere such as the gas composition and the occurrence of condensates and their…
Planets can emit polarized thermal radiation, just like brown dwarfs. We present calculated thermal polarization signals from hot exoplanets, using an advanced radiative transfer code that fully includes all orders of scattering by gaseous…
We present the results of a Monte Carlo radiative transfer code that calculates the polarization produced by multiple Thomson scattering and variable absorptive opacity in a circumstellar disk around one component of a close detached binary…
Within the framework of a flat cosmological model a propagation of an instantaneous burst of nonpolarized isotropic radiation is considered from the moment of its beginning at some initial redshift z0 to the moment of its registration now…
Ground-based observations of the Earthshine, i.e., the light scattered by Earth to the Moon, and then reflected back to Earth, simulate space observations of our planet and represent a powerful benchmark for the studies of Earth-like…