I wanted to leave a break for the holidays, but… this one’s a bit important. Astronomy and Astrophysics Review doesn’t print a lot, but the term “Review” means those papers it does print are substantial and significant. So:
Bagnulo, S. Belskaya, I. Cellino, A. et al. Polarimetry of Solar System minor bodies and planets A&ARv vol. 32, 7 s00159-024-00157-w
The simple title really understates it. This is a review paper, so it includes background material from this subfield, and extends to the latest developments, including earlier in 2024. In particular, there’s the use of polarimetry to gauge the sizes of potential Earth-impactors. Note that Belskaya had been a lead presenter at the ESA Workshop on Size Determination of Potentially Hazardous Near-Earth Objects. But even in general, polarimetry is a tool useful on Main Belt objects, outer planet satellites, atmospheric particles and comet coma/tails, and even the stars (though, per the title, stellar work isn’t covered here).
Polarimetry had largely been ignored by the science press, and the space fanboys. It takes a larger telescope, and/or longer observing times, so this work had fallen behind simple search and track efforts. But in recent years, that telescope time has been awarded, and our dataset of asteroid polarizations has swelled to a big, vital resource for small-body studies. Hence, time for a review paper. Give it a read if you weren’t into polarimetry before; heck, give it a read if you were, but hadn’t been keeping up with what’s going on in the field.