Support and Promotion of the use of Polarimetry with the ZIMPOL-SPHERE VLT Planet Finder Instrument

• Unité de recherche: COST
• Numéro de projet: C13.0048
• Titre du projet anglais: Support and Promotion of the use of Polarimetry with the ZIMPOL-SPHERE VLT Planet Finder Instrument

Mots-clé (Anglais)

Polarimetry; astronomical instrumentation; extra-solar planetary systems

Programme de recherche (Anglais)

COST-Action MP1104 - Polarization as a tool to study the Solar System and beyond

Description succincte (Anglais)

We have built a very innovative polarimetric imager called ZIMPOL (Zürich Polarimetric Imager) for the SPHERE Planet Finder, a second generation instrument for one of the four 8.2m VLT telescopes of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) on Paranal in Chile. This instrument should become in 2014 the most sensitive high contrast, and high spatial resolution imaging polarimeter in the world. This proposal asks for a position for a ``ZIMPOL COST scientist’’ with the task to promote the ZIMPOL polarimeter within the European science community through the network established by the COST action MP1104. The ``COST scientist'' will give advice to collegues in how to use ZIMPOL and support and collaborate with other scientists from the European astronomical community in achieving the best possible observational results. This promotion should help to maximize the scientific return of the ZIMPOL polarimeter and strengthen the support for the development of a similar instrument for the future 38m European Extremly Large Telescope E-ELT.

Partenaires et organisations internationales (Anglais)

AT; BE; BG; CZ; DK; FI; FR; DE; EL; HU; IE; IT; LV; MT; NL; PL; RS; SK; ES; SE; UK

Résumé des résultats (Abstract) (Anglais)

We have built, as part of a large instrument consortium, the high resolution imaging polarimeter ZIMPOL (Zurich Imaging Polarimeter) for the 'Planet Finder' instrument at the 8.2m VLT telescope of the European Southern Observatory in Chile. The 'Planet Finder' is currently the most sensitive instrument for direct imaging of extra-solar planets. In this COST project we have developed for the ZIMPOL instrument an user-friendly data reduction software, which enables the European astronomers to obtain high quality science products from future ZIMPOL observations or existing ZIMPOL data stored in the ESO data archive. In addition, we have promoted polarimetric observations with ZIMPOL within the astronomical community and supported very actively our colleagues in using this very innovative facility. We are very pleased that many astronomers started to use the ZIMPOL instrument, and that we had a lot of opportunities to support many new research projects based on high resolution and high contrast imaging polarimetry with ZIMPOL with our software and our advice. The supported projects cover serveral research fields in astronomy, including solar system research, extrasolar planetary systems and protoplanetary disks, substellar objects, mass loosing stars, stellar binaries and jet outflows. The software developed within this project is an essential tool for obtaining accurate and well calibrated polarimetric measurements of such astronomical targets. The achieved support and promotion of polarimetric investigation of astrophysical objects is exactly in line with the main goal of the COST action MP1104 on 'Polarization as a tool to study the Solar System and beyond'.

Références bases de données (Anglais)

Swiss Database: COST-DB of the State Secretariat for Education and Research Hallwylstrasse 4 CH-3003 Berne, Switzerland Tel. [phone] Swiss Project-Number: C13.0048