HAWC+ POLARIMATRY
In molecular clouds, dust grains tend to align perpendicular to the direction of magnetic field lines. The preferential alignment of these dust grains produces a linear polarization of the light they emit, meaning that polarized thermal dust emission will be perpendicular to the direction of the magnetic field. Thus, measurements of polarized thermal dust emission can be used to map magnetic field structures. HAWC+ (the High-resolution Airborne Wideband Camera plus) is a far-infrared camera and imaging polarimeter mounted on the SOFIA airborne telescope. It takes images in five bands between 50 μm and 240 μm, with a resolution of 5-20". HAWC+ provides data products that include measurements of the Stokes Q and U parameters and the total flux of polarized light.
More information on HAWC+ and SOFIA can be found here.