The new HiVIS spectropolarimeter and spectropolarimetric calibration of the AEOS telescope

Abstract

We designed, built, and calibrated a new spectropolarimeter for the HiVIS spectrograph (R 12000-49000) on the AEOS telescope. We also did a polarization calibration of the telescope and instrument. We will introduce the design and use of the spectropolarimeter as well as a new data reduction package we have developed, then discuss the polarization calibration of the spectropolarimeter and the AEOS telescope. We used observations of unpolarized standard stars at many pointings to measure the telescope induced polarization and compare it with a Zemax model. The telescope induces polarization of 1-6% with a strong variation with wavelength and pointing, consistent with the altitude and azimuth variation expected. We then used scattered sunlight as a linearly polarized source to measure the telescopes spectropolarimetric response to linearly polarized light. We then made an all-sky map of the telescope's polarization response to calibrate future spectropolarimetry.

arXiv commentPASP 118, June 2006

Cited by in corpus (13)

• The Solar-System-Scale Disk Around AB Aurigae
• Spectropolarimetry of the H-alpha line in Herbig Ae/Be stars
• Spectropolarimetric Observations of Herbig Ae/Be Stars. II. Comparison of Spectropolarimetric Surveys: HAeBe, Be and Other Emission-Line Stars
• Deriving Telescope Mueller Matrices Using Daytime Sky Polarization Observations
• Achromatizing a liquid-crystal spectropolarimeter: Retardance vs Stokes-based calibration of HiVIS
• Towards understanding dynamo action in M dwarfs
• Accelerated expansion from cosmological holography
• Spectropolarimetric observations of Herbig Ae/Be Stars I: HiVIS spectropolarimetric calibration and reduction techniques
• The IRCAL Polarimeter: Design, Calibration, and Data Reduction for an Adaptive Optics Imaging Polarimeter
• Ubiquitous H-alpha polarized line profiles: absorptive spectropolarimetric effects and temporal variability in Post-AGB, Herbig Ae/Be and other stellar types
• Spectropolarimetry of the Deep Impact target comet 9P/Tempel 1 with HiVIS
• Calibrating and Stabilizing Spectropolarimeters with Charge Shuffling and Daytime Sky Measurements
• Spectropolarimetry of the Deep Impact target comet 9P/Tempel 1 with HiVIS