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Evidence for two classes of comets from their polarimetric properties at large phase angles.

Levasseur-Regourd, A. C.; Hadamcik, E.; Renard, J. B.

The dependence of the linear polarization of solar light scattered by cometary dust upon the phase angle has been studied, through appropriate fits, from a data base of 22 comets and 750 points (mainly in the green and red spectral domains). Although the whole coma polarization is found to slightly increase with the wavelength, all the data obtain…