Polarimetry of solar system small bodies using the Seoul National University 61cm telescope and TRIPOL

It is known that lights scattered by comets and asteroids are partially polarized. From polarimetric observations of those objects, we can investigate physical properties, such as albedos, sizes of cometary dust particles and regolith of asteroids. Since the polarization degrees of those objects highly depend on their phase angles (Sun-object-observer's angles), long-term monitoring observations are required. Moreover, comets show unforeseeable activations (i.e., outbursts) which need follow-up observations to understand the mechanism. In order to realize such monitoring and transient observations, we installed the Triple-Range Imager and POLarimeter (TRIPOL) on the 61cm telescope of Seoul National University (Hereafter, SNU) Gwanak campus. With this combination, we can obtain g', r', i' bands photopolarimetric images simultaneously with $8.0^{\prime}{\times}8.0^{\prime}$ field of view and pixel resolution of 0.94" pixel-1. Here, we make a presentation regarding the photometric and polarimetric performances of TRIPOL on the SNU 61cm telescope. In addition, we introduce initial polarimetric results of asteroid and comets with the instruments. First, we determine the limiting magnitudes (defined as magnitudes for S/N=5) of $15.17{\pm}0.06$ (g'-band), $15.68{\pm}0.01$ (r'-band), $16.24{\pm}0.03$ (I'-band), respectively, with total 240-seconds exposure (four 60-seconds exposure images, each was taken at different rotation angle for the half-wave plate). Second, we found that the instrumental polarization is negligibly small, ($-0.32{\pm}0.04%$ in the g', $-0.36{\pm}0.05%$ in the r' and $-0.21{\pm}0.04%$ in the i'-bands), while the polarization efficiencies are large enough to maximize the performance (i.e., $97.52{\pm}0.03%$ in the g', $98.83{\pm}0.02%$ in the r' and $99.15{\pm}0.02%$ in the i'-bands). With the instruments, we made observations of three Jupiter-family comets, 21P/Giacobini-Zinner, 38P/Stephan-Oterma, and 46P/Wirtanen and plan to observe one near-Earth asteroid, (433) Eros, on a trial basis. Especially for comets, we discriminate signals from dust and gas to eliminate gas contamination, which are known to change observed degree of linear polarization, using multi-band images. We confirm that the phase angle dependency of these comets are consistent with previous observations, probably because polarimetric property of Jupiter-family comets are broadly homogeneous unlike asteroids. We will also describe future observation plans using TRIPOL and SNU 61cm telescope.