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Development of the SQUIDPOL Polarimeter and Initial Scientific Results 2026-03-23

  • Speaker : 진선호 (한국천문연구원)
  • Date : 2026-03-25 16:00 ~ 17:00
  • Location : 장영실홀 331-2
  • Host : 문홍규

Seoul National University Quadruple Imaging Device for Polarimetry (SQUIDPOL) is a low-cost, multi-channel imaging polarimeter. The instrument consists of a rotating half-wave plate, a non-polarizing beamsplitter (NPBS), and four wire-grid filters, enabling linear polarization measurements in a single exposure with B, V, and Cousins R and I bandpass filters. Since July 2024, SQUIDPOL has been mounted on the 60 cm telescope at the Pyeongchang Observatory of Seoul National University and has been used for both research and educational purposes. In this talk, we outline the development process of SQUIDPOL, including its optical and optomechanical design and on-site performance evaluation. In particular, we found that the dielectric coating inside the NPBS causes different polarization angles for transmitted and reflected light, and we therefore developed a correction scheme. Using this scheme, we achieved a polarization accuracy of 0.15% from bright, strongly polarized standard stars and obtained polarimetric performance comparable to that of other research-grade polarimeters. Furthermore, we will introduce two research papers on comet polarimetry that utilized SQUIDPOL. One is Lim et al. (2025), which conducted multi-wavelength polarimetric observations of the exceptionally bright comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS), and the other is Choi et al. (2026), which observed the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS using the instrument. The results from SQUIDPOL were consistent with the linear polarization degrees obtained from other observatories. We will also discuss ongoing and future observational projects using the instrument.

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