Linear polarization of 5 open clusters

In addition, common foreground dust layers detected towards different cluster directions highlight the presence of global features such as spiral arms. Our results show that the dust clouds at 2kpc towards Berkeley 69 and Berkeley 71 coincide with the Perseus arm, while the dust layer at ~4kpc towards distant clusters, Berkeley 19 and King 8, indicates the presence of the Outer arm. The large-scale dust distribution obtained by combining our polarization results with the previous polarization studies of nearby open clusters suggests that the anticenter direction is characterized by low extinction, homogeneous dust distribution with somewhat uniform orientation of the plane-of-sky component of the magnetic field along the line of sight.Our study demonstrates the utility of polarization as a tool to study the large-scale dust distribution and structural features where the kinematic distance methods are inadequate to provide accurate distances to the dust clouds.

The global dust distribution towards the anticenter direction shows signatures of the intervening spiral arms.