J/ApJS/276/15 Compilation of optical starlight polarization (Panopoulou+, 2025)
A Compilation of Optical Starlight Polarization Catalogs.
Panopoulou G.V., Markopoulioti L., Bouzelou F., Millar-Blanchaer M.A.,
Tinyanont S., Blinov D., Pelgrims V., Johnson S., Skalidis R., Soam A.
<Astrophys. J. Suppl. Ser. 276, 15 (2025)>
=2025ApJS..276...15P 2025ApJS..276...15P (SIMBAD/NED BibCode)
ADC_Keywords: Interstellar medium ; Magnetic fields; Polarization
Keywords: Catalogs - Starlight polarization - Interstellar medium - Surveys -
Interstellar magnetic fields
Abstract:
Polarimetry of stars at optical and near-infrared wavelengths is an
invaluable tool for tracing interstellar dust and magnetic fields.
Recent studies have demonstrated the power of combining stellar
polarimetry with distances from the Gaia mission, in order to gain
accurate, 3D information on the properties of the interstellar
magnetic field and the dust distribution. However, access to optical
polarization data is limited, as observations are conducted by
different investigators, with different instruments, and are made
available in many separate publications. To enable a more widespread
accessibility of optical polarimetry for studies of the interstellar
medium, we compile a new catalog of stellar polarization measurements.
The data are gathered from 81 separate publications spanning two
decades since the previous, widely used agglomeration of catalogs by
C. Heiles. The compilation contains a total of 55742 measurements of
stellar polarization. We combine this database with stellar distances
based on the Gaia Early Data Release 3, thereby providing polarization
and distance data for 42482 unique stars. We provide two separate
data products: an extended catalog (containing all polarization
measurements) and a unique source catalog (containing a subset of
sources excluding duplicate measurements). We propose the use of a
common tabular format for the publication of stellar polarization
catalogs to facilitate accessibility and increase discoverability in
the future.
Description:
The datasets compiled here combine stellar optical polarimetry from 81
publications with stellar distances based on Gaia. Compilation of
includes two tables: an extended polarization table which can include
multiple measurements of a source, and a unique source table where
each Gaia-matched source appears once.
File Summary:
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FileName Lrecl Records Explanations
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ReadMe 80 . This file
table4.dat 376 55742 The extended catalog
table5.dat 182 42482 The unique source catalog
table2.dat 34 44 Filter reference
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See also:
II/226 : Stellar polarization catalogs agglomeration (Heiles, 2000)
J/A+A/372/276 : Polarization catalogue for NGP area (Berdyugin+, 2001)
J/A+A/384/1050 : Interstellar polarization. VI. (Berdyugin+, 2002)
J/ApJ/603/584 : Polarimetry toward Musca dark cloud (Pereyra+, 2004)
J/A+A/561/A24 : Polarization at high galactic latitude (Berdyugin+, 2014)
Byte-by-byte Description of file: table4.dat
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Bytes Format Units Label Explanations
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1- 5 I5 --- Star Star identifier number
7- 34 A28 --- Name Common star name
36- 54 A19 --- RawStar Raw star identifier (original)
56- 57 I2 --- RefID Reference identifier
59- 92 A34 --- Inst Name of polarimeter used
94-105 F12.4 d JD ? Julian date
107-108 I2 --- Filter Filter identifier
110 I1 --- IntrPol [0/1] Intrinsic polarization flag (G1)
112-121 F10.6 deg RAdeg ? Right Ascension (J2000) - approximate
123-132 F10.6 deg DEdeg ? Declination (J2000) - approximate
134-143 F10.7 --- Pol ? Fractional linear polarization
145-154 F10.7 --- e_Pol ? Error in Pol
156-165 F10.7 --- dPol ? Debiased Pol
167-171 F5.1 deg PA ? Polarization angle (G2)
173-177 F5.1 deg e_PA ? Error in PA
179-189 F11.7 --- q ? Stokes parameter q (G2)
191-201 F11.7 --- e_q ? Error in q
203-213 F11.7 --- u ? Stokes parameter u (G2)
215-225 F11.7 --- e_u ? Error in u
227-245 I19 --- GaiaEDR3 ? Gaia EDR3 source identifier
247-263 F17.13 deg RAGdeg ? Right Ascension from Gaia EDR3
(ICRS) at Ep=2016.0)
265-281 F17.13 deg DEGdeg ? Declination from Gaia EDR3
(ICRS) at Ep=2016.0)
283-299 F17.13 deg RAJdeg ? Right Ascension (Gaia) converted to J2000
301-317 F17.13 deg DEJdeg ? Declination (Gaia) converted to J2000
319-322 F4.1 mag Gmag ? Gaia G-band apparent magnitude
324-331 F8.2 pc rpgeo ? Median photogeometric distance (G3)
333-340 F8.2 pc b_rpgeo ? 16th percentile photogeometric distance (G4)
342-349 F8.2 pc B_rpgeo ? 84th percentile photogeometric distance (G4)
351-358 F8.2 pc rgeo ? Median geometric distance (G3)
360-367 F8.2 pc b_rgeo ? 16th percentile geometric distance (G4)
369-376 F8.2 pc B_rgeo ? 84th percentile geometric distance (G4)
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Byte-by-byte Description of file: table5.dat
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Bytes Format Units Label Explanations
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1- 19 I19 --- GaiaEDR3 Gaia EDR3 source identifier
21- 25 I5 --- Star Star identifier number
27- 43 F17.13 deg RAdeg Right Ascension (Gaia) converted to J2000
45- 61 F17.13 deg DEdeg Declination (Gaia) converted to J2000
63- 66 F4.1 mag Gmag ? Gaia G-band apparent magnitude
68- 86 A19 --- RawStar Raw star identifier (original)
88- 89 I2 --- RefID Reference identifier
91- 92 I2 --- Filter Filter identifier
94 I1 --- IntrPol [0/1] Intrinsic polarization flag (G1)
96-105 F10.7 --- Pol ? Fractional linea9r polarization
107-116 F10.7 --- e_Pol ? Error in Pol
118-122 F5.1 deg PA ? Polarization angle (G2)
124-128 F5.1 deg e_PA ? Error in PA
130-137 F8.2 pc rpgeo ? Median photogeometric distance (G3)
139-146 F8.2 pc b_rpgeo ? 16th percentile photogeometric distance (G4)
148-155 F8.2 pc B_rpgeo ? 84th percentile photogeometric distance (G4)
157-164 F8.2 pc rgeo Median estimate geometric distance (G3)
166-173 F8.2 pc b_rgeo 16th percentile geometric distance (G4)
175-182 F8.2 pc B_rgeo 84th percentile geometric distance (G4)
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Byte-by-byte Description of file: table2.dat
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Bytes Format Units Label Explanations
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1- 2 I2 --- Filter Filter identifier
4- 28 A25 --- Band Common name of filter (1)
30- 34 F5.3 10-6m leff ? Effective wavelength of the filter
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Note (1): Bands named 'custom' refer to the broad-band averaging of
spectropolarimetric data in Andersson et al. (2013ApJ...775...84A 2013ApJ...775...84A).
Band BVR Dipol2 refers to a weighted-mean.
Band VRI has leff of 0.5-0.85 microns. Band named 'broad red band'
has leff of 0.735-0.804 microns.
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Global notes:
Note (G1): Intrinsic polarization flag as follows:
1 = indicates that the original publication found evidence for intrinsic
polarization for the star
0 = source is not intrinsically polarized or not known to be intrinsically
polarized.
Note (G2): Stokes parameters and PA are given in the Equatorial system, measured
according to IAU convention.
Note (G3): See Bailer-Jones et al. (2021AJ....161..147B 2021AJ....161..147B, Cat. I/352).
Note (G4): The difference between the median value and any of the two other
percentiles provides the 1-sigma (asymmetric) error on the distance.
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History:
From Georgia Panopoulou, georgia.panopoulou(at)chalmers.se
Acknowledgements:
All the authors who contributed to collecting and analyzing the body
of data that makes up this compilation.
(End) Patricia Vannier [CDS] 17-Jul-2025