• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.41 no.1
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• pp.77.3-77.3
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• 2016

In our previous study, we showed that the peculiar globular cluster M22 contains two distinct stellar populations with different physical properties, having different chemical compositions, spatial distributions and kinematics. We proposed that M22 is most likely formed via a merger of two GCs with heterogeneous metallicities in a dwarf galaxy environment and accreted later to our Galaxy. In their recent study, Mucciarelli et al. claimed that M22 is a normal mono-metallic globular cluster without any perceptible metallicity spread among the two groups of stars, which challenges our results and those of others. We devise new strategies for the local thermodynamic equilibrium abundance analysis of red giant branch stars in globuar clusters and show there exists a spread in the iron abundance distribution in M22.

• Publications of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.30 no.2
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• pp.183-187
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• 2015

We use ALLWISE data release W1- and W2-band epoch photometry collected by the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) to determine slopes of the period-luminosity relations for RR Lyrae stars in 15 globular clusters in the corresponding bands. We further combine these results with V- and K-band photometry of Galactic field RR Lyrae stars to determine the metallicity slopes of the log $P_F-[Fe/H]-M_K$, log $P_F-[Fe/H]-M_{W1}$, and log $P_F-[Fe/H]-M_{W2}$ period-metallicity-luminosity relations. We infer the zero points of these relations and determine the kinematical parameters of thick-disk and halo RR Lyraes via statistical parallax, and estimate the RR Lyrae-based distances to 18 Local-Group galaxies including the center of the Milky Way.

• Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.37 no.4
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• pp.261-263
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• 2004

We present a progress report on HCN(1-0) line observations toward starless cores to probe inward motions. We have made a single pointing survey toward the central regions of 85 starless cores and performed mapping observations of 6 infall candidate starless cores. The distributions of the velocity difference between HCN(1-0) hyperfine lines and the optically thin tracer $N_2H^+$(1-0) are significantly skewed to the blue, meaning that HCN(1-0) frequently detects inward motions. Their skewness to the blue is even greater than that of CS(2-1) Lee et al., possibly implying more infall occurrence than CS(1-0). We identify 19 infall candidates by using several characteristics illustrating spectral infall asymmetry seen in HCN(1-0) hyperfine lines, CS(3-2), CS(2-1), $DCO^+(2-1)$ and $N_2H^+$ observations. The HCN(1-0) F(O-l) with the least optical depth usually shows a similar intensity distribution to that of $N_2H^+$ which closely traces the density distribution of the cores, indicating that HCN(1-0) is less chemically affected and so believed to reflect kinematics occurring in rather inner regions of the cores. Detailed radiative transfer model fits of the spectra are underway to analyze central infall kinematics in starless cores.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.44 no.2
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• pp.72.3-72.3
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• 2019

OB associations are young stellar systems on a few tens to a hundred parsec scale, and many of them are composed of multiple substructures. It is suggested that some hints about their formation process are probably imprinted on structural features and internal kinematics. In this context, we study the massive star forming region W4 in the Cassiopeia OB6 association using the Gaia proper motion data and high-resolution optical spectra taken from Hectochelle on MMT. We probe the structure and internal kinematics of W4 to trance its formation process. Several nonmembers with different kinematic properties are excluded in our sample. Some of them may be young stellar population spread over a large area of the Perseus spiral arm given their wide spatial distribution over 50 parsecs. W4 is composed of an central open cluster (IC 1805) and an extended stellar component. Their global expansion patterns are detected in stellar proper motion. In this presentation, we will further discuss the formation process of W4, based on the velocity dispersions of stars comprising these substructure.

• Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.50 no.6
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• pp.157-165
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• 2017

$H_2O$ maser emission at 22 GHz in the circumstellar envelope is one of the good tracers of detailed physics and kinematics in the mass loss process of asymptotic giant branch stars. Long-term monitoring of an $H_2O$ maser spectrum with high time resolution enables us to clarify acceleration processes of the expanding shell in the stellar atmosphere. We monitored the $H_2O$ maser emission of the semi-regular variable R Crt with the Kagoshima 6-m telescope, and obtained a large data set of over 180 maser spectra over a period of 1.3 years with an observational span of a few days. Using an automatic peak detection method based on least-squares fitting, we exhaustively detected peaks as significant velocity components with the radial velocity on a $0.1kms^{-1}$ scale. This analysis result shows that the radial velocity of red-shifted and blue-shifted components exhibits a change between acceleration and deceleration on the time scale of a few hundred days. These velocity variations are likely to correlate with intensity variations, in particular during flaring state of $H_2O$ masers. It seems reasonable to consider that the velocity variation of the maser source is caused by shock propagation in the envelope due to stellar pulsation. However, it is difficult to explain the relationship between the velocity variation and the intensity variation only from shock propagation effects. We found that a time delay of the integrated maser intensity with respect to the optical light curve is about 150 days.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.44 no.2
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• pp.51.1-51.1
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• 2019

At the commissioning phase of KVN from 2009 to 2013, single-dish survey and monitoring observations were performed toward about 1000 evolved stars and about 60 relatively strong SiO and H2O maser sources respectively. Based on these single-dish results and VLBI feasibility test observations at K/Q/W/D bands in 2014, KVN Key Science Project (KSP) has started from 2015 and will be completed in 2019 as KSP phase I. Here we present the overview of observational studies on evolved stars using KVN. In KSP phase I, we have focused on nine KSP sources which show a successful astrometrically registered maps of SiO and H2O masers using the source frequency phase referencing method. We aim at investigating the spatial structure and dynamical effect from 43/42/86/129 GHz SiO to 22 GHz H2O maser regions associated with a stellar pulsation and development of asymmetry in circumstellar envelopes. Using the combined network KaVA (KVN+Japanese VLBI network VERA), KaVA Large Program titled on "Expanded Study on Stellar Masers: ESTEMA Phase I" was performed from 2015 to 2016. Based on ESTEMA Phase I, EAVN Large Program titled on "EAVN Synthesis of Stellar Maser Animations: ESTEMA Phase II" was also performed from 2018. The ESTEMA II project aims to publish composite animations of circumstellar H2O and SiO masers, which taken from up to 6 long-period variable stars with a variety of the pulsation periods (333-1000 days). The animations will exhibit the three-dimensional kinematics of the maser gas clumps with complexity caused by stellar pulsation-driven shock waves and anisotropy of clump ejections from the stellar surface. Adding three EAVN telescopes (Tianma 65m, Nanshan 26m and NRO 45m telescopes) with KaVA always secures the high quality of the maser image frames through the monitoring program.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.39 no.2
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• pp.89-89
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• 2014

While the current consensus view holds that galaxy mergers are commonplace, it is sometimes speculated that Globular Clusters (GCs) may also have undergone merging events, possibly resulting in massive objects with a strong metallicity spread such as Omega Centauri. Galaxies are mostly far, unresolved systems whose mergers are most likely wet, resulting in observational as well as modeling difficulties, but GCs are resolved into stars that can be used as discrete dynamical tracers, and their mergers might have been dry, therefore easily simulated with an N-body code. It is however difficult to determine the observational parameters best suited to reveal a history of merging based on the positions and kinematics of GC stars, if evidence of merging is at all observable. To overcome this difficulty, we investigate the applicability of supervised and unsupervised machine learning to the automatic reconstruction of the dynamical history of a stellar system. In particular we test whether statistical clustering methods can classify simulated systems into monolithic versus merger products. We run direct N-body simulations of two identical King-model clusters undergoing a head-on collision resulting in a merged system, and other simulations of isolated King models with the same total number of particles as the merged system. After several relaxation times elapse, we extract a sample of snapshots of the sky-projected positions of particles from each simulation at different dynamical times, and we run a variety of clustering and classification algorithms to classify the snapshots into two subsets in a relevant feature space.

• Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.53 no.2
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• pp.35-42
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• 2020

We analyze high dispersion emission lines of the symbiotic nova AG Pegasi, observed in 1998, 2001, and 2002. The Hα and Hβ lines show three components, two narrow and one underlying broad line components, but most other lines, such as H_I, He_I, and He_II lines, show two blue- and red-shifted components only. A recent study by Lee & Hyung (2018) suggested that the double Gaussian lines emitted from a bipolar conical shell are likely to form Raman scattering lines observed in 1998. In this study, we show that the bipolar cone with an opening angle of 74°, which expands at a velocity of 70 km s^-1 along the polar axis of the white dwarf, can accommodate the observed double line profiles in 1998, 2001, and 2002. We conclude that the emission zone of the bipolar conical shell, which formed along the bipolar axis of the white dwarf due to the collimation by the accretion disk, is responsible for the double Gaussian profiles.

• Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.28 no.2
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• pp.255-264
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• 1995

The HII region S140 and the associated molecular cloud L1204 have been observed with 10 molecular transitions, CO (1-0), $^{13}CO$ (1-0), $C^{18}O$ (1-0), CS (2-1), $HCO^+$ (1-0), HCN (1-0), SO (${2_2}-{1_1}$), $SO_2(2_{20}-3_{13})$, OCS (8-7), and $HNCO\;(4_{04}-3_{03})$ with ${\sim}50"$ angular resolutions. More than 7,000 spectra were obtained in total. The morphology of this region shows a massive fragment (the S140 core) and the extended envelope to the northeast. Several gas condensations have been identified in the envelope, having masses of ${\sim}10^{3}M_{\odot}$ and gas number densities of ${\lesssim}10^{4}cm^{-3}$ to $3{\times}10^{5}cm^{-3}$ in their cores. The column densities of the observed molecular species toward the S140 core appear to be the typical warm clouds' abundances. It seems to be that the S140 core and L1204 have been swept up by an expanding shell called the Cepheus bubble. The large value of $L_{IR}$(embedded\;stars)/$M_{cloud}\;{\sim}\;5\;L_{\odot}$/$M_{\odot}$ of the S140 core may suggest that the star formation has been stimulated by the HII region, but the shock velocity and the pressure of the region seem to give a hint of the spontaneous star formation by the self gravity.

• Publications of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.30 no.2
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• pp.189-191
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• 2015

The calibration of the period luminosity relation (PLR) for Galactic Mira variables is one of the principle aims of the VERA project. We observe $H_2O$ maser emission at 22 GHz associated with Mira variables in order to determine their distances based on annual parallaxes. We conduct multi-epoch VLBI observations over 1-2 years with a typical interval of one month using VERA in order to obtain annual parallaxes with an accuracy of better than than 10%. Recently, the annnual parallax of T Lep was determined to be $3.06{\pm}0.04$ mas corresponding to a distance of $327{\pm}4pc$ (Nakagawa et al., 2014). The circumstellar distribution and kinematics of $H_2O$ masers was also revealed. With accurate distances to the sources, calibrations of K-band absolute magnitudes ($M_K$) can be improved compared to conventional studies. By compiling Mira variables whose distances were determined with astrometric VLBI, we obtained a PLR of $M_K=3.51logP+1.37{\pm}0.07$.