Integrated Optical Polarization of Nearby Galaxies
  We performed an integrated optical polarization survey of 70 nearby galaxies
to study the relationship between linear polarization and galaxy properties. To
date this is the largest survey of its kind. The data were collected at
McDonald Observatory using the Imaging Grism Polarimeter on the Otto Struve
2.1m telescope. Most of the galaxies did not have significant level of linear
polarization, where the bulk is <1%. A fraction of the galaxies showed a loose
correlation between the polarization and position angle of the galaxy,
indicating that dust scattering is the main source of optical polarization. The
unbarred spiral galaxies are consistent with the predicted relationship with
inclination from scattering models of ~sin^2i.
