The moon as a cosmic source of linearly polarized radio emission

Abstract

We analyze parameters of the partially linearly polarized thermal radio emission from the Moon taking the effects of radiative heat transfer and surface roughness into account. The distributions of the Stokes parameters I, Q, and U over the visible lunar disk are considered. The polarization parameters of the integral radio emission as functions of the frequency and the Moon phase are obtained by integrating the Q and U distributions. We consider the possibility of using the Moon as a reference source of partially linearly polarized radiation for space-borne and ground-based projects aimed at studying polarization of the Galactic radio emission and the cosmic microwave background.

ATLAS 1.4 GHz Data Release 2 - I. Observations of the CDF-S and ELAIS-S1 fields and methods for constructing differential number counts

“…Given these large angular separations, we assumed that any influences on our data from the Moon (e.g. as relevant to polarization: Vinyaikin & Krotikov 2007;Zhang et al 2012) or the Sun were negligible. MIRIAD was used to derive and apply the bandpass, complex gain, complex leakage, and flux density calibrations.…”

“…Given these large angular separations, we assumed that any influences on our data from the Moon (e.g. as relevant to polarization:Vinyaikin & Krotikov 2007;Zhang et al 2012) or the Sun were negligible.…”