EMPOL: an EMCCD based optical imaging polarimeter

TL;DR

EMPOL is an optical imaging polarimeter developed using an EMCCD detector, capable of observing various celestial sources with a 3x3 arcmin field of view, enabling detailed polarization studies.

Contribution

This work introduces a new EMCCD-based optical imaging polarimeter for the 1.2 m telescope at PRL, detailing its design, observational methodology, and initial calibration results.

Findings

Successful calibration of the polarimeter.

Observation of diverse celestial sources.

Potential for detailed polarization measurements.

Abstract

An Andor 1K $\times$ 1K EMCCD detector has been used to develop an optical imaging polarimeter for use at the Cassegrain focus of 1.2 m telescope of PRL. The optics is derived from an older single-element detector instrument and consists of a rotating half-wave plate as modulator and a Foster prism as an analyser. The field of view of the instrument is 3 $\times$ 3 sq arcmin. We describe the instrument and the observational methodology in this document. Extensive observations have been carried out with this instrument covering a large variety of sources e.g. near-Earth asteroids, comets, Lynds dark nebulae, open clusters and AGN such as blazars. In the current communication, we discuss some results from the initial calibration runs while the other results will be presented elsewhere.