Related papers: Daytime Sky Polarization Calibration Limitations
We present commissioning data for the POLISH instrument obtained on the Hale 5-m telescope. The goal of this high precision polarimeter is to constrain orbital inclination of high mass X-ray binaries and to therefore obtain independent mass…
Scattering polarization signals offer a unique diagnostics of the physical conditions in the solar atmosphere, in particular magnetic fields via the Hanle effect. However, their spatial structure remains poorly constrained due to the…
Using the HiVIS spectropolarimeter built for the Haleakala 3.7m AEOS telescope in Hawaii, we are collecting a large number of high precision spectropolarimetrc observations of stars. In order to precisely measure very small polarization…
In polarimetry it is important to characterize the polarization properties of the instrument itself to disentangle real astrophysical signals from instrumental effects. This article deals with the accurate measurement and modeling of the…
We outline polarization fringe predictions derived from a new application of the Berreman calculus for the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope (DKIST) retarder optics. The DKIST retarder baseline design used 6 crystals, single-layer…
The ~39-m European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT) will be the largest telescope ever built. This makes it particularly suitable for sensitive polarimetric observations, as polarimetry is a photon-starved technique. However, the telescope…
Current mm/submm interferometers, like the Atacama Large mm/submm Array (ALMA), use receivers that register the sky signal in a linear polarization basis. In the case of observations performed in full-polarization mode (where the…
With sub-microarcsecond angular accuracy, the \theia telescope will be capable of revealing the architectures of nearby exoplanetary systems down to the mass of Earth. This research addresses the challenges inherent in space astrometry…
Optical polarimeters are typically calibrated using measurements of stars with known and stable polarization parameters. However, there is a lack of such stars available across the sky. Many of the currently available standards are not…
In our previous paper (Masiero et al. 2007) we presented the design and initial calibrations of the Dual-Beam Imaging Polarimeter (DBIP), a new optical instrument for the University of Hawaii's 2.2 m telescope on the summit of Mauna Kea,…
For the majority of optical observing programs, the sky brightness provides the fundamental limit to signal detection such that the scientific feasibility is largely dictated by the moon phase. Since most observatories do not have the…
The Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope (DKIST) Visible Spectro-Polarimeter (ViSP) is a traditional slit-scanning spectrograph, with the ability to observe solar regions up to a $120\times78~\mathrm{arcsec}^2$ area. The design implements…
Adaptive optics systems require a calibration procedure to operate, whether in closed loop or even more importantly in forward control. This calibration usually takes the form of an interaction matrix and is a measure of the response on the…
Polarization leakage of foreground synchrotron emission is a critical issue in HI intensity mapping experiments. While the sought-after HI emission is unpolarized, polarized foregrounds such as Galactic and extragalactic synchrotron…
Many objects on the sky exhibit a centrosymmetric polarization pattern, particularly in cases involving single scattering around a central source. Utilizing a novel liquid crystal device (the ``theta cell'') that transforms the coordinate…
The direction angle of twilight sky background polarization in the celestial sphere points far from solar vertical is found to depend on the ratio of single and multiple scattering contributions. The polarization direction behavior during…
Polarimetry is widely considered a powerful observational technique in X-ray astronomy, useful to enhance our understanding of the emission mechanisms, geometry and magnetic field arrangement of many compact objects. However, the lack of…
A telescope polarization model for the SST [Swedish 1-m Solar Telescope] is developed and the parameters of this model are fitted to polarization measurements made with a 1-meter linear polarizer in front of the entrance window. In this…
We develop a polarization characterization platform for optical devices in free-space quantum communications. We demonstrate an imaging polarimeter, which analyzes both incident polarization states and the angle of incidence, attached to a…
We present the photometric calibration technique for the Digitized Second Palomar Observatory Sky Survey (DPOSS), used to create seamless catalogs of calibrated objects over large sky areas. After applying a correction for telescope…