Related papers: Interstellar Polarization Survey II: General Inter…
Interstellar polarization at far-infrared through millimeter wavelengths (0.1 - 1 mm) is primarily due to thermal emission from dust grains aligned with magnetic fields. This mechanism has led to studies of magnetic fields in a variety of…
Linear polarization of diffuse Galactic emission is a signature of magnetic fields in the interstellar medium of our Galaxy. Observations at high frequencies are less affected by Faraday depolarization than those at lower frequencies and…
A key problem in astronomy involves the role of the environment in the formation and evolution of galaxies. In order to answer this question it is necessary to characterize a reference sample with minimum influence from the environment, so…
It is well known that aligned, aspherical dust grains emit polarized radiation and that the degree of polarization depends on the angle $\psi$ between the interstellar magnetic field and the line of sight. However, anisotropy of the dust…
We seek to obtain a picture of the interstellar magnetic field in the Galactic center region that is as clear and complete as possible. To that end, we review the observational knowledge that has built up over the past 25 years on…
The polarization of light is a critically under-utilized, rich source of information in astronomy. For stars in particular, surface magnetism polarization that can be detected and measured with spectro-polarimetry. Many questions about…
Optical starlight can be partially polarized while propagating through the dusty, magnetized interstellar medium. The polarization efficiency describes the polarization intensity fraction per reddening unit, P$_V$/E($B-V$), related to the…
Starlight that becomes linearly polarized by magnetically aligned dust grains provides a viable diagnostic of the interstellar magnetic field (ISMF). A survey is underway to map the local ISMF using data collected at eight observatories in…
The Planck survey provides unprecedented full-sky coverage of the submillimetre polarized emission from Galactic dust, bringing new constraints on the properties of dust. The dust grains that emit the radiation seen by Planck in the…
Magnetic fields are widely observed in various astronomical contexts, yet much remains unknown about their significance across different systems and cosmic epochs. Our current knowledge of the evolution of magnetic fields is limited by…
The role of the magnetic field in the formation of the filamentary structures observed in the interstellar medium (ISM) is a debated topic. The Planck all-sky maps of linearly polarized emission from dust at 353GHz provide the required…
Understanding the physics of how stars form is a highly-prioritized goal of modern Astrophysics, in part because star formation is linked to both galactic dynamics on large scales and to the formation of planets on small scales. It is…
In this investigation, we present an analysis of the metallicity distribution that pertains to neutral gas in the local Galactic interstellar medium (ISM). We derive relative ISM metallicities for a sample of 84 sight lines probing diffuse…
This is the first in a series of three papers describing a project with the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph on the Hubble Space Telescope to measure abundances of the neutral interstellar medium (ISM) in a sample of 9 nearby star-forming…
Dust is a ubiquitous component in our Galaxy. It accounts for only $1\%$ mass of the ISM but still is an essential part of the Galaxy. It affects our view of the Galaxy by obscuring the starlight at shorter wavelengths and re-emitting in…
Synchrotron radiation from the interstellar medium (ISM) of our galaxy dominates the sky brightness at low radio frequencies, and carries information about relativistic and thermal electron distributions across a range of astrophysical…
We have used polarimetric imaging to study the magneto-ionic medium of the Galaxy, obtaining 1420 MHz images with an angular resolution of 1' over more than 40 square-degrees of sky around the W3/W4/W5/HB3 HII region/SNR complex in the…
Within four nearby (d < 160 pc) molecular clouds, we statistically evaluate the structure of the interstellar magnetic field, projected on the plane of the sky and integrated along the line of sight, as inferred from the polarized thermal…
We performed an integrated optical polarization survey of 70 nearby galaxies to study the relationship between linear polarization and galaxy properties. To date this is the largest survey of its kind. The data were collected at McDonald…
This paper provides testable predictions about starlight polarizations to constrain the geometry of the Galactic magnetic field, in particular the nature of the poloidal component. Galactic dynamo simulations and Galactic dust distributions…