Description
The Galactic Center offers unique opportunities to study stellar and bow-shock polarization effects in a dusty environment. The goals of this work are to provide near-infrared (NIR) polarimetry of the stellar sources in the central parsec at the resolution of an 8m telescope for the first time, along with new insights into the nature of the known bright bow-shock sources. We use adaptive-optics assisted observations obtained at the ESO VLT in the H- and Ks-band, applying both high-precision photometric methods specifically developed for crowded fields and a newly established polarimetric calibration for NACO to produce polarization maps of the central 3"x10", in addition to spatially resolved polarimetry and a flux variability analysis on the extended sources in this region.
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