Related papers: Expanding stellar horizons with polarized light
In recent decades, the relevance of polarimetry in planetary sciences and astronomy has increased rapidly. Polarization is a fundamental property of light and can be modified by any scattering event. As such, polarization yields additional…
Astronomical polarimetry is a powerful technique that can provide physical information sometimes difficult or impossible to obtain by any other type of observation. Almost every class of binary star can benefit from polarimetric…
Stellar Magnetism affects all spectral types and exists and varies throughout the evolution of stars. Magnetic fields can affect not only the interior of stars, but also their circumstellar environments. In this chapter, we concentrate on…
Polarimetry remains a largely unexploited technique in observational X-ray astronomy which could provide insight in the study of the strong gravity and magnetic fields at the core of the Constellation-X observational program. Adding a…
Polarization is a basic property of light and is fundamentally linked to the internal geometry of a source of radiation. Polarimetry complements photometric, spectroscopic, and imaging analyses of sources of radiation and has made possible…
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…
Observational astrophysics started when spectroscopy could be applied to astronomy. Similarly, observational work on stellar magnetic fields became possible with the application of spectro-polarimetry. In recent decades there have been…
Most astrophysical systems, e.g. stellar winds, the diffuse interstellar medium, molecular clouds, are magnetized with magnetic fields that influence almost all of their properties. One of the most informative techniques of magnetic field…
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…
Magnetic fields permeate the entire Galaxy and are essential to, for example, the regulation of several stages of the star formation process and cosmic ray transportation. Unraveling its properties, such as intensity and topology, is an…
The growing sample of magnetic stars shows a remarkable diversity in the properties of their magnetic fields. The overall goal of current studies is to understand the origin, evolution, and structure of stellar magnetic fields in stars of…
Through polarization observations masers are unique probes of the magnetic field in a variety of different astronomical objects, with the different maser species tracing different physical conditions. In recent years maser polarization…
Most of the visible matter in the Universe is ionized, so that cosmic magnetic fields are quite easy to generate and due to the lack of magnetic monopoles hard to destroy. Magnetic fields have been measured in or around practically all…
In recent years, the development of spectropolarimetric techniques deeply modified our knowledge of stellar magnetism. In the case of solar-type stars, the challenge is to measure a geometrically complex field and determine its evolution…
Photometric light curves suffer from fundamental degeneracies that limit surface information recovery. We demonstrate that astrometry enables access to complementary information through photocentre variations induced by rotating surface…
The polarization state of starlight reflected by a planetary atmosphere uniquely reveals coverage, particle size, and composition of aerosols as well as changing cloud patterns. It is not possible to obtain a comparable level of detailed…
Magnetism is one of the most important forces on the interstellar medium (ISM), anisotropically regulating the structure and star formation that drive galactic evolution. Recent high dynamic range observations of diffuse gas and molecular…
The study of magnetars is of particular relevance since these objects are the only laboratories where the physics in ultra-strong magnetic fields can be directly tested. Until now, spectroscopic and timing measurements at X-ray energies in…
The disciplines of asteroseismology and extrasolar planet science overlap methodically in the branch of high-precision photometric time series observations. Light curves are, amongst others, useful to measure intrinsic stellar variability…
Magnetic fields on the surface of the Sun and stars in general imprint or modify the polarization state of the electromagnetic radiation that is leaving from the star. The inference of solar/stellar magnetic fields is performed by…