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Session 66 - Astrophysical Diagnostics from Polarimetry.
Oral session, Wednesday, June 12
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The growing number of available polarimetric instruments, together with a great improvement in quality of polarimetric data, is opening up improved ways of learning about the circumstellar environments of hot stars. Moderate-resolution spectropolarimetry is providing tighter constraints for theoretical models, and can provide unique information about circumstellar material. Combining polarimetry with traditional approaches such as spectroscopy, and using improved and detailed modeling techniques, provides opportunities to investigate questions about the nature and distribution of circumstellar matter around hot stars. This talk will give a brief overview of some of the methods available, as well as some recent results on hot stars (including Oe/Be stars, OB supergiants, Herbig Ae/Be stars, and Wolf-Rayet stars) coming from polarimetric observations.
Research on observations and modeling of astronomical polarimetry of hot stars has been supported at the University of Wisconsin under NASA contract NAS5-26777 and NASA grants NAGW-2921 and NAGW-4527.
