Characterization of High-polarization Stars and Blazars with DIPOL-1 at Sierra Nevada Observatory

Abstract

We report here the performance and first results of the new multiband optical polarimeter DIPOL-1, installed at the Sierra Nevada Observatory 90 cm T90 telescope (SNO, Granada, Spain). DIPOL-1 is equipped with a plane parallel calcite plate and $\lambda$/2 retarder for modulating the intensity of two perpendicularly polarized beams, and a high readout speed CMOS camera that allows for fast, time-dense coverage. We characterize the performance of this instrument through a series of tests on zero- and high-polarization standard stars. The instrumental polarization in the Nasmyth focus was well determined, with a very stable contribution of 4.0806% $\pm$ 0.0014% in the optical $R$ band. For bright high-polarization standards ($m_R<8$) we reach precisions $<$0.02% in polarization degree and 0.1${}^{\circ }$ in polarization angle for exposures of 2$-$4 minutes. The polarization properties of these stars have been constrained, providing more recent results also about possible variability for future studies on some of the most used calibrators. Moreover, we have tested the capability of observing much fainter objects, in particular through blazar observations, where we reach a precision $<$0.5$-$0.6% and $<$0.5${}^{\circ }$ for faint targets ($m_R\sim 16.5$) with exposures of $\sim$1 hour. For brighter targets ($m_R\sim 14.5-15$), we can aim for time-dense observations with errors $<$$0.2-0.4$% and $<$$1-1.5^{\circ }$ in 5-20 minutes. We have successfully performed a first campaign with DIPOL-1, detecting significant polarized emission of several blazars, with special attention to the highest ever polarization degree measured from blazar 3C~345 at $\sim$32%.

Accepted in AJ

References in corpus (6)

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• Detection of Compton scattering in the jet of 3C 84