Polarization of Light in the Atmosphere

Coulson, Kinsell L.

doi:10.1016/b978-0-12-192950-3.50011-5

Cited by 106 publications

(227 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…At the latitude of Panama near the equator, astronomical twilight starts about 1 h before local sunrise and ends about 1 h after local sunset. During the entire twilight period the polarisation pattern varies little in angular distribution, degree of polarisation, or spectral content, reaching an 80% degree of polarisation at wavelengths of 600 nm (Coulson 1988;Cronin et al 2006). Thus, with the high polarisation sensitivity present in the DRA of the nocturnal bee M. genalis, the polarisation pattern during this twilight period represents a simple and reliable orientation cue.…”

Section: Polarised Light As a Nocturnal Navigation Cuementioning

confidence: 92%

“…The spectrum of celestial polarised skylight at night, both from the sun and the moon, peaks at middle to long wavelengths (Coulson 1988;Gal et al 2001;Barta and Horvath 2004;Cronin etal. 2006).…”

Section: Polarised Light As a Nocturnal Navigation Cuementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Animals that use this solar polarisation pattern during twilight navigation avoid the complex geometrical changes that are present when the sun travels across the sky, because the twilight polarisation pattern is relatively simple and constant (Rozenberg 1966;Coulson 1988;Cronin et al 2006). On the other hand, its light intensity is low, and orienting at such times requires a highly sensitive polarised light detector.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Anatomical and physiological evidence for polarisation vision in the nocturnal bee Megalopta genalis

Greiner

Cronin²,

Ribi

et al. 2007

J Comp Physiol A

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The presence of a specialised dorsal rim area with an ability to detect the e-vector orientation of polarised light is shown for the first time in a nocturnal hymenopteran. The dorsal rim area of the halictid bee Megalopta genalis features a number of characteristic anatomical specialisations including an increased rhabdom diameter and a lack of primary screening pigments. Optically, these specialisations result in wide spatial receptive fields (Ap = 14°), a common adaptation found in the dorsal rim areas of insects used to filter out interfering effects (i.e. clouds) from the sky. In this specialised eye region all nine photoreceptors contribute their microvilli to the entire length of the ommatidia. These orthogonally directed microvilli are anatomically arranged in an almost linear, anterior-posterior orientation. Intracellular recordings within the dorsal rim area show very high polarisation sensitivity and a sensitivity peak within the ultraviolet part of the spectrum.

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Section: Polarised Light As a Nocturnal Navigation Cuementioning

confidence: 92%

Section: Polarised Light As a Nocturnal Navigation Cuementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Anatomical and physiological evidence for polarisation vision in the nocturnal bee Megalopta genalis

Greiner

Cronin²,

Ribi

et al. 2007

J Comp Physiol A

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“…An angle of view of 180 ø was ensured by a fisheye lens (NikonNikkor, F-2.8, focal length: 8 ram) including a built-in rotating disc mounted with three neutral density linear polarization (type HNP'B) filters with three different polarization axes (0 ø, 45 ø, and 90 ø measured from the radius of the disc), and the detector was a photoemul- 26ø30'E *The solar azimuth angle c; was the same as the lunar azimuth angle in Table 1. As the polarization of scattered sunlight [Coulson, 1988], also the polarization of scattered moonlight depends slightly on the wavelength [Gehrels, 1974]. This sinall wavelength dependency of the polarization patterns of the moonlit clear night sky was washed out by using black and white photographic film as detector: In order to minimize the time of exposure, the polarization characteristics of the moonlit sky must have been recorded by a highly sensitive photographic film.…”

Section: Measurement Of the Celestial Polarizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Polarization of the moonlit clear night sky measured by full‐sky imaging polarimetry at full Moon: Comparison of the polarization of moonlit and sunlit skies

Gál¹,

Horváth²,

Barta³

et al. 2001

J. Geophys. Res.

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“…julien.serres@univ-amu.fr constituents induce the partially linear polarization of the skylight [3]. As shown in figure 1, the direction of the linear polarization of skylight at the zenith point is always perpendicular to the solar meridian.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 92%

A novel insect-inspired optical compass sensor for a hexapod walking robot

Dupeyroux¹,

Diperi²,

Boyron³

et al. 2017

2017 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS)

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Abstract-In an outdoor autonomous navigational context, classic compass sensors such as magnetometers have to deal with unpredictable magnetic disturbances. In this paper, we propose to get inspiration from the insect navigational abilities to design a celestial compass based on linear polarization of ultraviolet (UV) skylight. To compute the solar meridian relative orientation, our 3D-printed celestial compass uses only two pixels created by two UV-light photo-sensors topped with linear polarizers arranged orthogonally to each other, in the same manner that was observed in insects' Dorsal Rim Area ommatidia. The compass was then embedded on our hexapod walking robot called Hexabot. We first tested the UV-polarized light compass to compensate for yaw random disturbances. We then used the compass to maintain Hexabot's heading direction constant in a straight-forward task, knowing the robot has important yaw drifts. Experiments under various meteorological conditions provided steady state heading direction errors from 0.3 • under clear sky conditions to 1.9 • under overcast sky, which suggests interesting precision and reliability to make this optical compass suitable for robotics.

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Polarization of Light in the Atmosphere

Cited by 106 publications

References 35 publications

Anatomical and physiological evidence for polarisation vision in the nocturnal bee Megalopta genalis

Anatomical and physiological evidence for polarisation vision in the nocturnal bee Megalopta genalis

Polarization of the moonlit clear night sky measured by full‐sky imaging polarimetry at full Moon: Comparison of the polarization of moonlit and sunlit skies

A novel insect-inspired optical compass sensor for a hexapod walking robot

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