• Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.51 no.5
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• pp.129-142
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• 2018

The DEEP-South (the Deep Ecliptic Patrol of the Southern Sky) photometric census of small Solar System bodies produces massive time-series data of variable, transient or moving objects as a by-product. To fully investigate unexplored variable phenomena, we present an application of multi-aperture photometry and FastBit indexing techniques for faster access to a portion of the DEEP-South year-one data. Our new pipeline is designed to perform automated point source detection, robust high-precision photometry and calibration of non-crowded fields which have overlap with previously surveyed areas. In this paper, we show some examples of catalog-based variability searches to find new variable stars and to recover targeted asteroids. We discover 21 new periodic variables with period ranging between 0.1 and 31 days, including four eclipsing binary systems (detached, over-contact, and ellipsoidal variables), one white dwarf/M dwarf pair candidate, and rotating variable stars. We also recover astrometry (< ${\pm}1-2$ arcsec level accuracy) and photometry of two targeted near-earth asteroids, 2006 DZ169 and 1996 SK, along with the small- (~0.12 mag) and relatively large-amplitude (~0.5 mag) variations of their dominant rotational signals in R-band.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.44 no.1
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• pp.80.1-80.1
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• 2019

Photometric investigations of asteroids allow us to determine their rotation states and shape models (Apostolovska et al. 2014). Our main target, asteroid (2078) Nanking's perihelion distance (q) is 1.480 AU, which belongs to the Mars-crossing asteroid (1.3 < q < 1.66 AU). Mars-crossing asteroids are objects that cross the orbit of Mars and regarded as one of the primary sources of near-Earth asteroids due to the unstable nature of their orbits. We present the analysis of the spin parameters and 3D shape model of (2078) Nanking. We conducted Cousins_R-band time-series photometry of this asteroid from November 26, 2014 to January 17, 2015 at the Sobaeksan Optical Astronomy Observatory (SOAO) and for 25 nights from March to April 2016 using the Korea Microlensing Telescope Network (KMTNet) to reconstruct its physical model with our dense photometric datasets. Using the lightcurve inversion method (Kaasalainen & Torppa 2001; Kaasalainen et al. 2001), we determine the pole orientation and shape model of this object based on our lightcurves along with the archival data obtained from the literatures. We derived rotational period of 6.461 h, the preliminary ecliptic longitude (${\lambda}_p$) and latitude (${\beta}_p$) of its pole as ${\lambda}_p{\sim}8^{\circ}$ and ${\beta}_p{\sim}-52^{\circ}$ which indicates a retrograde rotation of the body. From the apparent W UMa-shaped lightcurve and its location in the rotation frequency-amplitude plot of Sheppard and Jewitt (2004), we suspect the contact binary nature of the body (Choi 2016).

• Bulletin of the Korean Space Science Society
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• 2004.10b
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• pp.65-65
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• 2004

• Aerospace Engineering and Technology
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.120-128
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• 2014

Adventure of human race for space exploration is toward outer region of solar system. Recently the main targets of space explorations are becoming mainly the Mars, Venus and asteroids instead of the Moon which was the popular place human wants to explore. There are several technical challenges as spacecraft goes far and far away from the Earth, and among them communication protocol is one of the most challenging problems. In this paper, several international technical trends regarding deep space communication protocol technologies in an aspect of software implementation is presented. It is expected that these references are helpful for the development of the lunar orbiter pathfinder which is planned to be launched in 2017.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.40 no.2
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• pp.45.1-45.1
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• 2015

Hayabusa is the JAXA's space mission that succeeded in sample-return from S-type asteroid (25143) Itokawa. During the rendezvous phase, more than a thousand of images were taken with the Asteroid Multi-band Imaging Camera (AMICA). It is valuable to study the regional variation of the optical properties on the asteroid using these images to know the generality and uniqueness of the returned samples. In addition, AMICA images are important in that they provide unique data set at low phase angle (i.e Sun-Itokawa-AMICA's angle) that have not been explored in the previous asteroidal missions. At the previous conference (2015 KAS spring meeting), we introduced our preliminary data analysis of AMICA data without considering the shape model of Itokawa and mentioned. In this study, we present a new result obtained through further analysis, taking account of the shape model of the asteroid. We thus utilized "plate_renderer" tool to derive Hapke model parameters at different terrains. It is found that the opposition amplitude (parameter B0) is consistent with those of the other S-type asteroids while the opposition width (parameter h) is significantly narrower than those of the other S-type asteroids. At this conference, we plan to describe the regional variation of photometric properties on Itokawa.

• Animal Systematics, Evolution and Diversity
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.243-263
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• 1995

Twenty-nine species of asteroids are reported to be distributed in the East Sea of Korea. Five species are reported to be distributed in the East Sea of Korea. Five speices are reported for the first time in Korea ; Solaster endeca (Linn, 1771), Lethasterias fusca D'yakonov, 1931, Lethasterias nanimensis chelifera (verrill, 1914), Lysastrosoma anthostictha Fisher, 1992 and Evasterias troscheli alveolata Verrill, 1914. The faunal composition and distribution of the asteroids in the East Sea of Korea are discussed.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.41 no.2
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• pp.49.1-49.1
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• 2016

Asteroid taxonomy dates back to the mid-1970's and is based mostly on broadband photometric and spectroscopic observations in the visible wavelength. Different taxonomic classes have long been characterized by spectral slope shortward of 0.75 microns and the absorption band in 1 micron, the principal components. In this way, taxonomic classes are grouped and divided into four broad complexes; silicates (S), carbonaceous (C), featureless (X), Vestoids (V), and the end-members that do not fit well within the S, C, X and V complexes. The past decade witnessed an explosion of data due to the advent of large-scale asteroid surveys such as SDSS. The classification scheme has recently been expanded with the analysis of the SDSS 4th Moving Object Catalog (MOC 4) data. However, the boundaries of each complex and subclass are rather ambiguously defined by hand. Furthermore, there are only few studies on asteroid taxonomy using Johnson-Cousins filters, and those were conducted on a small number of objects, with significant uncertainties. In this paper, we present our preliminary results for a new taxonomic classification of asteroids using SMASS, Bus and DeMeo (2014) and the SDSS MOC 4 datasets. This classification scheme is simply represented by a triplet of photometric colors, either in SDSS or in Johnson-Cousins photometric systems.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.35 no.2
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• pp.52.2-52.2
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• 2010

107P/(4015) Wilson-Harrington is one of possible candidates of the dormant or inactive comet nuclei. It was discovered on a photographic plate exposed with the 48-inch Schmidt at Palomar Observatory on 1949 November 19 UT, displaying the faint extended cometary tail. No comet activity has not been after 1949 apparition. Here we present the optical observations of 107P/(4015) Wilson - Harrington during 2009/2010 apparition taken in search of low-level comet activity. Our photometric and spectroscopic data were collected 28 - 86 days after the perihelion passage on 2009 October 22 in a wide range of solar phase angle of 39-68 degree. A disk-integrated phase function was constructed, giving a geometric albedo of 0.055+/-0.012, phase integral of q=0.34, and Bond albedo of A_B=0.019. The photometric property shows profile similar to low albedo asteroids and comet nuclei. Any emission lines were found in our spectrum, giving a flat reflectance similar to low albedo asteroids. Although we could not find any evidence for the comet activity in our photometric and spectroscopic data, we found an upper limit of the fractional active area of 0.001%. We derived the upper limit of the optical depth of the dust trail and tail 7x10^{-10}. We conclude that 107P/(4015)Wilson-Harrington became completely dormant or inactive in 2009/2010 return.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.43 no.1
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• pp.70.1-70.1
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• 2018

The DEEP-South photometric census of small Solar System bodies is producing massive time-series data of variable, transient or moving objects as a by-product. To fully investigate unexplored variable phenomena, we present an application of multi-aperture photometry and FastBit indexing techniques to a portion of the DEEP-South year-one data. Our new pipeline is designed to do automated point source detection, robust high-precision photometry and calibration of non-crowded fields overlapped with area previously surveyed. We also adopt an efficient data indexing algorithm for faster access to the DEEP-South database. In this paper, we show some application examples of catalog-based variability searches to find new variable stars and to recover targeted asteroids. We discovered 21 new periodic variables including two eclipsing binary systems and one white dwarf/M dwarf pair candidate. We also successfully recovered astrometry and photometry of two near-earth asteroids, 2006 DZ169 and 1996 SK, along with the updated properties of their rotational signals (e.g., period and amplitude).

• Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.41 no.1
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• pp.7-15
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• 2008

We carried out a set of simulations to reproduce the performance of wide-field NEO surveys based on the revised population model of Near Earth Objects (NEOs) constructed by Morbidelli (2006). This is the first time where the new model is carefully compared with discovery statistics, and with the exception of population model, the simulation is identical to the procedure described in Moon et al. (2008). Our simulations show rather large discrepancy between the number of NEO discoveries made by the actual and the simulated surveys. First of all, unlike Bottke et al. (2002)'s, Morbidelli (2006)'s population model overestimates the number of NEOs. However, the latter reproduces orbit distributions of the actual population better. Our analysis suggests that both models significantly underestimate Amors, while overestimating the number of Apollos. Our simulation result implies that substantial modifications of both models are needed for more accurate reproduction of survey observations. We also identify Hungaria region (HU) to be one of the most convincing candidates that supply a large fraction of asteroids to the inner Solar System.