| Name: | Aravind K |
| Affiliation: | Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad |
| Conference ID : | ASI2022_244 |
| Title : | Optical polarimetric study of cometary dust |
| Authors : | Aravind K, Prithish Halder, Namita Uppal, Prachi Prajapati, Shashikiran Ganesh |
| Abstract Type: | Poster |
| Abstract Category : | Sun and the Solar System |
| Abstract : | Comets are the primordial remnants of our Solar system, containing pristine materials that were present in the protosolar nebula. Various reservoirs containing the cometary bodies were formed as a result of the enormous mixing up of the planetesimals initially present in the protosolar nebula during the formation of the giant planets present in the Solar system. An intensive study of essentially all the observable comets belonging to various reservoirs is required to analyse and classify the type of material present in them. Such analysis can help understand the kind of mixing that may have happened during the Solar system's formation. The polarisation study of comets at different phase angles can be used to understand the physical and compositional properties of the dust present in them. This work discusses the polarisation observation of various comets at distinct phase angles, observed using the EMPOL instrument mounted on the 1.2 m telescope at Mt. Abu, Rajasthan. The observed degree of polarisation in these comets are then compared with a few modelled polarimetric-phase curves, which make use of a mixed morphology of dust particles consisting of hierarchical aggregates and agglomerated debris having an inhomogeneous mixture of silicate minerals and carbonaceous compounds under power-law size distribution. Such comparisons can be used to have a general understanding of the properties of the dust present in the comets belonging to different reservoirs. |