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| EPoS Contribution |
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Dust properties in star forming clouds, studied through photopolarimetry
Asoke K. Sen Dept. of Physics, Assam University, Silchar, India | |
| It is believed that, the light from a background star when passes through a star-forming cloud gets polarized due to its scattering with the dusts present in the cloud. These dusts are dichroic particles, which get aligned by the ambient magnetic field present in the cloud. This magnetic field generally plays a key role in the star formation dynamic, when the cloud is undergoing gravitational collapse. Thus polarimetry provides a good tool to study the geometry of magnetic field and other dust properties. With these aims we have in past studied eight such clouds through polarimetry and out of these three were further studied in photometry to understand the relation between optical extinction and polarization in these clouds. It has been observed that, the extinction values do not appear to be strongly related to the polarization observed in a given cloud, for different background stars. However, features from the observed polarization vs extinction plot, when combined with other physical properties of the cloud, help us to understand physical processes in many of such star forming clouds. | |
| Collaborators: V.F.Polcaro, IASFC Roma, Italy |
Key publication
Suggested Session: Magnetic Fields, Molecular Clouds |