Polarimetric calibrations and astronomical polarimetry in the V-band with Solar Orbiter/METIS instrument

METIS is one of the remote sensing instruments on board the ESA- Solar Orbiter mission, that will be launched in July 2017. The Visible Light Channel (VLC) of the instrument is composed by an achromatic LC-based polarimeter for the study of the linearly polarized solar K-corona in the 580-640 nm bandpass. The laboratory calibrations with spectropolarimetric techniques and the in-flight calibrations of this channel, using some well knows linearly polarized stars in the FoV of the instrument with a degree of linear polarization DOLP 〉 10% are here discussed. The selection of the stars and the use of other astronomical targets (i.e. planets, comets,…) and the opportunity of measurements of the degree of linear polarization in the visible bandpass of some astronomical objects (i.e. Earth, comets,…) are also objects of this paper.