PhD Defense: Noah Sienkiewicz
Location
Physics : 401
Date & Time
June 3, 2025, 10:00 am – 1:00 pm
Description
ADVISOR: Dr. J. Vanderlei Martins
TITLE: Characterization of the HARP2 Instrument and its Influences on the Polarimetric Retrieval of Aerosol Particles
ABSTRACT: The HyperAngular Rainbow Polarimeter (HARP) is a small form-factor passive remote sensing imager which can measure the linear Stokes parameters via the “division of amplitude” scheme. Incoming telecentric light is split via an optical prism element into three beams, with each beam having a preferential polarization axis which is preserved through the splitting process in a Pickering (0◦,45◦,90◦) configuration. The front lens interface of HARP is a wide field-of-view (FOV) lens which spans 114◦ along its orbital track, and 94◦ cross-track. There exists AirHARP, HARP CubeSat, HARP2, and AirHARP2 (in chronological order), built via the Earth and Space Institute (ESI) at the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC), all of which share these characteristics as well as others: HARP-class instruments have 4 spectral channels nominally referred to as blue, green, red, and near-infrared (NIR) which correspond to 440, 550, 665, and 865 nm, respectively. All HARP spectral channels are determined via the spectral “stripe filter” placed at the end of the optical train which divides rows of the light sensitive pixels on the HARP sensor by spectral channel and by “view sector“ corresponding to the angular information of the front lens. In this way HARP contains up to 60 red view sectors, and 20 in the remaining bands with pattern following: green, red, NIR, red, blue, red, green ... though HARP retains the ability to selectively turn off individual view sectors to customize this structure via a “line table.”
TITLE: Characterization of the HARP2 Instrument and its Influences on the Polarimetric Retrieval of Aerosol Particles
ABSTRACT: The HyperAngular Rainbow Polarimeter (HARP) is a small form-factor passive remote sensing imager which can measure the linear Stokes parameters via the “division of amplitude” scheme. Incoming telecentric light is split via an optical prism element into three beams, with each beam having a preferential polarization axis which is preserved through the splitting process in a Pickering (0◦,45◦,90◦) configuration. The front lens interface of HARP is a wide field-of-view (FOV) lens which spans 114◦ along its orbital track, and 94◦ cross-track. There exists AirHARP, HARP CubeSat, HARP2, and AirHARP2 (in chronological order), built via the Earth and Space Institute (ESI) at the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC), all of which share these characteristics as well as others: HARP-class instruments have 4 spectral channels nominally referred to as blue, green, red, and near-infrared (NIR) which correspond to 440, 550, 665, and 865 nm, respectively. All HARP spectral channels are determined via the spectral “stripe filter” placed at the end of the optical train which divides rows of the light sensitive pixels on the HARP sensor by spectral channel and by “view sector“ corresponding to the angular information of the front lens. In this way HARP contains up to 60 red view sectors, and 20 in the remaining bands with pattern following: green, red, NIR, red, blue, red, green ... though HARP retains the ability to selectively turn off individual view sectors to customize this structure via a “line table.”
