Interstellar dust

Image credit: ESA/Planck Collaboration; M.-A. Miville-Deschêne

Interstellar dust is what polarizes starlight propagating through the magnetized interstellar medium. So in order to include observatiosn of starlight polarization (Work Package 1) into the Galactic magnetic field modeling software IMAGINE (Work Package 2), we need to have a reliable dust distribution.

This Work Package includes deriving an all-sky, 3D dust distribution, including polarizing and non-polarized grain contributions if needed, and including this into IMAGINE.

As the project progressed, external colleagues have published 3D dust distributions that are relevant and applicable for our goals.