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Polarization is observed in the light of the sky, as this is due to sunlight scattered by aerosols as it passes through Earth's atmosphere. The scattered light produces the brightness and color in clear skies. This partial polarization of scattered light can be used to darken the sky in photographs, increasing the contrast.
Circular polarization is often encountered in the field of optics and, in this section, the electromagnetic wave will be simply referred to as light. The nature of circular polarization and its relationship to other polarizations is often understood by thinking of the electric field as being divided into two components that are perpendicular to ...
The polarization is characterized at each wavelength by its degree of polarization, and orientation (the e-vector angle, or scattering angle). The polarization pattern of the sky is dependent on the celestial position of the Sun. While all scattered light is polarized to some extent, light is highly polarized at a scattering angle of 90° from ...
They are used as polarizing filters in photography to reduce oblique reflections from non-metallic surfaces, and are the lenses of the 3D glasses worn for viewing some stereoscopic movies (notably, the RealD 3D variety), where the polarization of light is used to differentiate which image should be seen by the left and right eye.
Optical rotation, also known as polarization rotation or circular birefringence, is the rotation of the orientation of the plane of polarization about the optical axis of linearly polarized light as it travels through certain materials.
An illustration of the polarization of light that is incident on an interface at Brewster's angle. Brewster's angle (also known as the polarization angle) is an angle of incidence at which light with a particular polarization is perfectly transmitted through a transparent dielectric surface, with no reflection.
Circular polarization and linear polarization can be considered to be special cases of elliptical polarization. This terminology was introduced by Augustin-Jean Fresnel in 1822, [1] before the electromagnetic nature of light waves was known. Elliptical polarization diagram
Continuum light is linearly polarized at different locations across the face of the Sun (limb polarization) though taken as a whole, this polarization cancels. Linear polarization in spectral lines is usually created by anisotropic scattering of photons on atoms and ions which can themselves be polarized by this interaction.