Wednesday, March 16, 2016

Pixelated Camera Highlights Polarization at Jupiter's Poles

We are highlighting an exciting application of PolarCam technology today in the Practical Tips blog.

In a recent astronomy application 4D Technology mounted a custom micropolarizer array to a thermoelectric cooled, 4 Megapixel Finger Lakes camera. Dmitry Vorobiev, an astrophysics PhD candidate at the Rochester Institute of Technology, installed the instrument in the 1-meter Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory telescope in Chile, shown here.



The camera is visible at the base of the telescope in the image below. 


"Polarization at the poles of Jupiter was first identified in the 1920s," says Mr. Vorobiev. "Since then, scientists have lead periodic attempts to determine the nature of the polar clouds. However, their efforts were hindered by the large distance to Jupiter and the practical difficulty associated with conventional polarimetric techniques. New snapshot polarimetric cameras allow, for the first time, routine polarimetric measurements."

Mr. Vorobiev trained the telescope and sensor on Jupiter and captured the impressive polarization images below. A strong Degree of Linear Polarization signal can be seen at the poles of the planet. Several theories have been proposed for such a strong polarization signal at the poles, including a different composition of atmospheric particles at this region, and the presence of methane ice crystals.

A strong Degree of Linear Polarization (DoLP) at Jupiter's poles as imaged by micropolarizer camera technology. All images courtesy of Dmitry Vorobiev, Rochester Institute of Technology.

The micropolarizer array has become an essential tool for polarization imaging. The technology, which is at the heart of 4D PolarCam snapshot micropolarizer cameras, enables image enhancement for applications ranging from astronomy to birefringence measurement, industrial monitoring, polarization microscopy, medical imaging and autonomous vehicle vision.

More information about Mr. Voribiev's research is available at https://people.rit.edu/dxv2686/research.html.