• Publications of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.30 no.2
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• pp.193-195
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• 2015

The Palomar Transient Factory is a project making use of a Schmidt 48 inch telescope located on the Palomar Mountain, which is surveying the sky with dynamical cadences. It was deployed in 2009 and the observed sky region is over 1200 square degrees. We have studied the long-term periodic variabilities of the known galactic cataclysmic variables (CVs). More than 20 of the sources had been found to have long term periodic signals, ranging from several tens of days to several hundreds of days. Some possible scenarios are proposed to explain the results, such as a magnetic field change of the companion star, precession of the accretion disk, triple systems and superoutburst cycles. Some preliminary discussion will be presented in this article.

• Publications of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.30 no.2
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• pp.237-240
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• 2015

Classical novae (CNe) are interacting binary systems whose outbursts are powered by a thermonuclear runaway in accreted material onto the surface of a white dwarf (WD). The secondary star in such systems fills its Roche lobe and material is transferred onto the WD primary star via an accretion disk. Recurrent novae (RNe) show many similarities to CNe, but have had more than one recorded outburst. RNe play an important role as one of the suspected progenitor systems of Type Ia supernovae, which are used as primary distance indicators in cosmology. Thus, it is important to investigate the nature of their central binary systems to determine the relation between the parameters of the central system and the outburst type, and finally ascertain the population of novae that might be available to give rise to the progenitors of Type Ia SNe. A low outburst amplitude is adopted as a criterion that may help distinguish RNe from CNe and was therefore used to select targets for observations from ground-based observatories including the Liverpool Telescope and the Southern African Large Telescope as well as the full-sky space-based archive of the Solar Mass Ejection Imager (SMEI). We found that at least four objects currently classified as CNe are possibly RNe candidates based on their quiescent spectra. We also searched the SMEI archive for additional outbursts of bright CNe that might otherwise have been missed but did not find a conclusive example.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.37 no.2
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• pp.103.1-103.1
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• 2012

We present the results of SDSS r, i and z band photometry for HBC722 (also known as $LkH{\alpha}$ 188 G4, PTF10qpf and V2493 Cyg), with Camera for Quasars in Early uNiverse (CQUEAN) attached to 2.1m Otto Struve telescope at McDonald Observatory, USA. HBC722 is a newly erupted FU Orionis type object, which produced optical outburst (${\Delta}V$=4.7 mag) over a year that peaked in 2010 September. We carried out the monitoring observations during 48 nights from 2011 April to 2012 June to check the short-term and the long-term variabilities for chasing the Keplerian rotation of the system. Comparing the photometric results of r, i and z band, we describe the color variability which is related to the physical properties of the system like circumstellar disk and accretion process.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.45 no.1
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• pp.60.2-60.2
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• 2020

In the hierarchical framework, galaxies grow through mergers and accretion. Those mechanisms leave faint features, such as stellar streams, shells and smooth stellar halos in the outskirts of galaxies. In order to search for those features in the nearby galaxies, we are conducting a KMTNet Nearby Galaxy Survey using the Korea Microlensing Telescope Network. We present a deep and wide-field imaging of NGC 5236, a barred spiral galaxy. In one-dimensional surface brightness profiles, we reach 28, 29 mag/arcsec2 in the R- and B-band, respectively. We find that the outer disk of NGC 5236 can be well described with a single exponential profile up to 17 kpc (~3.8 Reff) indicating that the excess light due to the stellar halo is not clearly detected. B-R color gradually increases towards the outskirts of the galaxy. It may reveal that stellar properties in the outskirts are marginally distinctive from those in the central part.

• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.25-30
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• 2002

Black hole binary candidates are known to be composed of a black hole with 10 $M_{\odot}$ and a K or M type companion. Because the companion is believed to fill the Roche lobe that is very aspherical, the light curves of black hole binaries are characterized by an ellipsoidal variation. It has been known that the ellipsoidal light curves exhibit asymmetric maximum brightness at the orbital phases 0.25 and 0.75, which has been attributed to star spots or the hot impact points of the accretion flow on to the accretion disk around the black hole. In this paper, it is pointed out that the special relativistic beaming effect contributes to the asymmetry of several percent often observed in the light curves. The typical orbital velocity 400 km $s^{-1}$ observed in black hole binaries may induce the temperature difference $\DeltaT/T$ ~ 1/400 of the late type companion star in the observer`s rest frame, because of the special relativistic Doppler beaming effect. This difference in temperature can result in several per cent of brightness sensitively dependent on the wavelength band, which is comparable to what has been observed in most black hole binary candidates. Considering the significant contribution of the special relativistic Doppler beaming effect, we conclude that the estimation of the sizes and temperatures of the star spots or the hot impact point needs serious revision.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.37 no.1
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• pp.33.2-33.2
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• 2012

Low-ionization nuclear emission-line region (LINER) galaxies constitute a major fraction of low-luminosity AGN population in the local Universe. In contrast to Seyfert galaxies, it is theoretically expected that LINERs would not have an outflow due to their low Eddington ratio. Using Keck/LRIS spectroscopy on a nearby LINER galaxy SDSS J091628.05+420818.7, we find a significant radial velocity offset for [OIII]${\lambda}$5007 emission line as - 50 km $s^{-1}$ blueshifted compared to systemic velocity of the galaxy, while other emission lines exhibit no or little offset. The observed [OIII] velocity offset possibly indicates an outflow of gas in the LINER galaxy, and it is probable that we only detected the [OIII] velocity offset because [OIII] ionization region is closer to the accretion disk, hence, more affected by an outflow. We further investigate the [OIII] velocity offset of -4000 SDSS AGN-host galaxies to compare the strength of AGN outflow. We find that a number of both LINER and Seyfert galaxies show [OIII] velocity offset, but the fraction of LINER galaxies with velocity offset is smaller than that of Seyfert galaxies. The preliminary results imply the presence of gas outflow in LINER galaxies, although outflow strength is probably weaker compared to Seyfert galaxies.

• Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.40 no.1
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• pp.1-7
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• 2007

About 10 percent of quasars are known to exhibit deep broad absorption troughs blueward of prominent permitted emission lines, which are usually attributed to the existence of outflows slightly above he accretion disk around the supermassive black hole. Typical widths up to 0.2c of these absorption roughs indicate the velocity scales in which special relativistic effects may not be negligible. Under he assumption of the ubiquity of the broad absorption line region in quasars, the broad emission line flux will exhibit Thomson scattered components from these fast outflows. In this paper, we provide our Monte Carlo calculation of linear polarization of singly Thomson scattered line radiation with the careful considerations of special relativistic effects. The scattering region is approximated by a collection of rings that are moving outward with speeds ${\upsilon}=c{\beta}<0.2c$ near the equatorial plane, and the scattered line photons are collected according to its direction and wavelength in the observer's rest frame. We find that the significantly extended red tail appears in the scattered radiation. We also find that the linear degree of polarization of singly Thomson scattered line radiation is wavelength-dependent and hat there are significant differences in the linear degree of polarization from that computed from classical physics in the far red tail. We propose that the semi-forbidden broad emission line C III]1909 may be significantly contributed from Thomson scattering because this line has small resonance scattering optical depth in the broad absorption line region, which leads to distinct and significant polarized flux in this broad emission line.

• Publications of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.30 no.2
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• pp.585-586
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• 2015

4U 1323-62, a low mass X-ray binary with an orbital period of 2.94 hr, exhibits periodic X-ray dips, which are due to absorption by the bulge of the outer accretion disk. The purpose of this study is to search for orbital period changes using archived X-ray data over a time span of 20 years. We present our preliminary results from analyzing light curves observed by RXTE, BeppoSAX, XMM-Newton and Suzaku. We used the method proposed by Hu et al. (2008) to estimate dip center time and adopted the Observed - Calculated method to measure changes in period. We obtained an orbital period of 2.941917(36) hr and a period derivative of $\dot{P}_{orb}/P_{orb}=(-9.9{\pm}3.5){\times}10^{-7}yr^{-1}$. The F-test result shows that the quadratic ephemeris is describes the evolution of the dip phases better than the linear ephemeris at a greater than 95% confidence level. More X-ray data collected from the early 80s will be included to further refine the orbital ephemeris.

• Publications of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.30 no.2
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• pp.591-592
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• 2015

X1822-371 is a low mass X-ray binary with an accretion disk corona exhibiting partial eclipses and pulsations in the X-ray band. We update its orbital ephemeris by combining new RXTE observations and historical records, with a total time span of 34 years. There were 11 RXTE observations in 2011 but the eclipsing profile can be seen in only 4 of them. The eclipsing center times were obtained by fitting the profile with the same model as previous studies. Combined with the eclipsing center times reported by Iaria et al. (2011), the O-C analysis was processed. A quadratic model was applied to fit the O-C results and produced a mean orbital period derivative of $\dot{P}_{orb}=1.339(25){\times}10^{-10}s/s$, which is slightly smaller than previous records. In addition to the orbital modulation from the orbital profile, we also present our preliminary results for measuring the orbital parameters using the orbital Doppler effect from the pulsation of the neutron star in X1822-371. The updated orbital parameters from eclipsing profiles will be further compared with the ones from pulsar timing.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.37 no.2
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• pp.240.2-240.2
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• 2012

AGN(Active Galactic Nucleus) consists of a supermassive black hole located at its center, an accretion disk around the black hole, and bipolar jets. Since May 2011, we have performed the MOGABA(Monitoring Of GAmma-ray Bright AGN) project for observing gamma-ray bright AGN once a week at multifrequencies using KVN(Korean VLBI Network) 21m radio telescopes. The MOGABA project is the observations for measuring the degree of polarization, polarization angle, and total flux of about 20 AGN at 22, 43 and 86GHz. By this project, we are able to investigate polarization characteristics, spectral index, and variation of rotation measure at radio wavelengths of gamma-ray bright AGN and to study possible relation between gamma-ray flares and magnetic field structure change in AGN. According to previous research, gamma-ray flares of some AGN are coincident with large changes in angle of linear polarization. In this paper we report the preliminary results of linear polarization and total flux at 22, 43, 86GHz of gamma-ray bright quasars 3C279 and 1510-089 showing noticeable variation of total flux at 22GHz in late 2011, and discuss possible correlation with gamma ray light curves.