What is PASIPHAE, and why is it important? Polar-Areas Stell | UPSC PRO
What is PASIPHAE, and why is it important?
Polar-Areas Stellar-Imaging in Polarisation High-Accuracy Experiment (PASIPHAE) is an international collaborative sky surveying project.
• Scientists aim to study the polarisation in the light coming from millions of stars.
Background: Polarization is a property of light that represents the direction that the light wave oscillates.
How will the survey be carried out?
1 The survey will use two high-tech optical polarimeters to observe the northern and southern skies, simultaneously.
2 It will focus on capturing starlight polarisation of very faint stars that are so far away that polarisation signals from there have not been systematically studied.
3 The distances to these stars will be obtained from measurements of the GAIA satellite.
4 By combining these data, astronomers will perform a maiden magnetic field tomography mapping of the interstellar medium of very large areas of the sky using a novel polarimeter instrument known as WALOP (Wide Area Linear Optical Polarimeter).
