Sky's Polarization Essay

At this point, it is important to note that, this particular orientation of rhodopsin in the microvillar membrane which gives selective sensitivity to polarized light by itself is not sufficient to analyse the sky 's polarization. An interesting analogy to spectral vision may be stated at this point to make this concept clearer, just like how it would be impossible to detect various colours if only one colour pigment was present, it is equally impossible to analyse the sky 's polarization if the eyes are sensitive to only one particular type of polarization. Therefore, it is clear that different types of receptor which are sensitive to different types of polarization must coordinate and work to give an unambiguous direction of polarization. Some suggested examples of receptors are, one which differentiates the intensity of incident light, another receptor which detects shade (hue) of colour i.e., sensitive to the wavelength of light apart from the previously discussed polarization sensitive receptor. However, it must …show more content…
To understand why this the case a brief understanding of the experiment and the observation of the behavior of the ant is needed and hence is outlined. While the tracker followed the ant in a particular case, the light from the sky incident on ant 's eye viewed was deliberately depolarized completely. This resulted in the ant moving in arbitrary directions. We know from earlier on that the sun is a source of unpolarized light and also the point in the sky where it is maximally unpolarized, Thus, by completely depolarizing the entire sky, the suns unpolarized light/position gets drowned with the other unpolarised light. The fact that the ant loses orientation, in this case, proves that the reference point the ants use is the sun. It also makes sense because bees and ants seldom roam out of their hives or nests after or close to