A Polarimetric Study of Long-Period Comet C/2013 US10 (Catalina) and Estimation of Its Gas Contamination in Optical and Near-Infrared Wavelengths

Polarimetric study of light scattering from cometary dust particles can provide us opportunity to decipher their characteristics, such as sizes, structures, compositions of dust grains, etc. Herein, we present the results of our polarimetric study of long-period comet, C/2013 US10 (Catalina), in optical and near-infrared wavelengths which appeared at large phase angle (52.7 degrees) around the mid-December, 2015. We performed polarimetric and spectroscopic observations with HONIR, attached to the 1.5-m telescope at Higashi-Hiroshima Observatory, on UT 2015 December 17-18 and also obtained optical imaging data sets by the Ishigakijima Astronomical Observatory (IAO) and Okayama Astrophysical Observatory (OAO) taken between 2014-2015. By measuring the intensities of gas emission lines with respect to dust continuum and considering transmittance of each filter, we estimated that the percentages of gas contamination are approximately 10 percents in $R_C$-band and 3 percents in $I_C$-band. With these results, we derive the degree of linear polarization scattered solely from dust components in the coma. At this presentation, we will compare the phase-angle dependence of the degree of linear polarization with those of previous archive data in a wide coverage of wavelengths from $R_C$-band to $K_S$-band. Finally, we are supposed to discuss the spatial variations in polarization within the coma.