The Limb Polarization of the Jovian Planets and Predictions for the Polarization of Extrasolar Planets

Details The Limb Polarization of the Jovian Planets and Predictions for the Polarization of Extrasolar Planets The Limb Polarization of the Jovian Planets and Predictions for the Polarization of Extrasolar Planets

Sep 2009

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2009dps....41.1009b&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #41, #10.09

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

The polarization of light reflected from a planet provides unique information on the atmosphere structure and scattering properties of particles in the upper atmosphere. For the outer planets observations from Earth measure mainly backscattered light that is generally unpolarized. However, a second order scattering effect produces a measurable limb polarization for resolved planetary disks.
We have obtained imaging- and spectro-polarimetric observations of the limb polarization of the Jovian planets from 520 to 935 nm. We interpret our observations with a Monte Carlo scattering code that calculates the intensity and radial polarization depending on the scattering and absorption properties of gas, cloud and haze particles, and the optical depth of the various layers. On Uranus and Neptune, Rayleigh scattering by gas particles mainly produces the radial polarization of 1-2% along the entire limb. On Jupiter only the poles show a limb polarization of up to 10% due to a thick layer of highly polarizing haze particles. Our data of Saturn reveal a new transient polarization feature near the equator. The limb polarization is often enhanced within methane absorption bands due to an inhomogeneous vertical distribution of absorbers. We discuss the diagnostic potential of our limb polarization observations and models.
Limb polarization observations of the solar system planets are also of interest to test models for the polarization of extrasolar planets. The future VLT planet finder instrument SPHERE will be equipped with a polarimetric mode for the search and characterization of extra-solar planets around nearby stars. We have calculated a large grid of polarization phase curves for simple atmosphere models and discuss the expected polarization of extrasolar planets similar to our gas giants as deduced from limb polarization observations.

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