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Program Number
37
Program Name The Polarizing Power of the Interstellar Medium                      
Principal
Investigator
Hector G. Arce  [email]  [web]  
Co-Investigator(s) Alyssa Goodman, Pierre Bastien, Nadine Manset and Mathew Sumner

Abstract 

We aim to obtain the spectra of a list of stars in order to obtain their spectral type, and in combination with photometric data obtain the distance to the star (through spectroscopic parallax) and the extinction along the line of sight. The stars lie along "cuts" through the Taurus Dark Cloud complex, sampling a range of extinctions from 0 to about 4 magnitudes. Combining our photometric and spectroscopy data with polarimetric data we will study the relation between polarization percentage of starlight and the extinction for stars background to regions with different densities. Our final goal is to compare the polarizing power of the dust in the low-density ISM with that of the dust in dense molecular clouds.
Spectra [search in archive]
Trimester(s) data taken 1995c-1997a
Papers 1998, ApJ, 499, L93
1999, ApJ, 512, L135
1999, ApJ, 517, 264

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The Polarizing Power of the Interstellar Medium in Taurus

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