• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.41 no.2
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• pp.34.2-34.2
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• 2016

We study the mid-infrared (MIR) properties of galaxies in compact groups and their environmental dependence using the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer data. We use a sample of 670 compact groups and their 2175 member galaxies with $M_r$ < -19 and 0.01 < z < 0.0741 from Sohn et al. (2016), which were identified through a friends-of-friends algorithm. We find that the MIR [3.4]-[12] colors of early-type galaxies in compact groups are on average bluer than those of early-type galaxies in clusters. Furthermore, we find that when compact groups have both early- and late-type member galaxies, the MIR colors of the late-type galaxies in those compact groups can be bluer than those of late-type galaxies in clusters. We also find that as background galaxy number densities of compact groups increase, compact group galaxies have higher early-type galaxy fractions and bluer MIR colors. These trends are also seen for background galaxies. However, at a given background density, compact group galaxies always have higher early-type galaxy fractions and bluer MIR colors than the background galaxies. Our findings suggest that the properties of compact group galaxies depend on both internal and external environments of the compact groups, and that galaxy evolution is faster in compact groups than in clusters.

• Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.41 no.5
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• pp.109-119
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• 2008

We present an optical-infrared photometric study of galaxies in six nearby clusters of galaxies at $z=0.041{\sim}0.098$ (A1436, A1773, A1809, A2048, A2142, and A2152). Using BV I photometry obtained at the Bohyunsan Optical Astronomical observatory and $JHK_S$ photometry extracted from the 2-Micron All-Sky Survey catalog, we investigate the colors of galaxies in the clusters. Using the (B - V) versus ($I\;-\;K_S$) color-color diagrams in comparison with the simple stellar population model, we estimate the ages and metallicities of bright early-type member galaxies. Early-type galaxies in each cluster show the color-magnitude relation. Ages and metallicities of early-type members show little dependence on their velocity dispersions. Mean ages of early-types in the clusters range from 3 Gyr to 20 Gyr, showing a large dispersion, and mean metallicities range from Z = 0.03 to 0.05 above the solar value, showing a negligible dispersion.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.38 no.2
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• pp.49.2-49.2
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• 2013

We report preliminary results from a radio study of central galaxies in cool and non-cool core clusters. A cooling flow is expected to rapidly form in the center of galaxy clusters unless additional heating mechanisms such as merging with sub clusters are at work. It has been suggested that cool flows can feed the AGN in the central galaxies, increasing their power. On the other hand, the AGN feedback can also affect the surrounding medium, heating back up the gas in the cluster core region. In this study, we investigate the co-evolution of cool flows and the AGN of galaxies located in the cluster center. For this study, we have selected 13 radio bright central galaxies from clusters with a range of cooling time scale. In this work, we present results of our recent observations using the Korean VLBI Network. We discuss the properties of the sample in radio and other wavelengths.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.37 no.2
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• pp.87.1-87.1
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• 2012

The fraction of blue galaxies in clusters is found to dramatically increase with redshift. This trend has been known as the Butcher-Oemler (B-O) effect which implies a significant evolution among the cluster galaxy population with time. It has been proposed that the blue galaxies in B-O clusters are at their last stage of star formation, probably using up the gas, which then might have evolved into red and passive cluster galaxies as found in the Local Universe. To test this hypothesis and ultimately to understand the evolution of cluster galaxy population as a function of redshift, we have embarked a multi-wavelength study of two carefully selected galaxy clusters at z~0.2 where the B-O effect becomes first noticeable. In this talk, I will introduce the Blind Ultra-deep Distant HI Environmental Survey (BUDHIES) on those two clusters and relevant multi-wavelength observations. Also, I will present the preliminary results of our recent Nobeyama CO observations of two galaxies selected among the BUHDIES sample.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.46 no.2
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• pp.72.1-72.1
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• 2021

Galaxy mergers are known to have been one of the main drivers in galaxy evolution in a wide range of environments. However, in galaxy clusters, high-speed encounters have been believed to undermine the role of mergers as a driver in galaxy evolution. Nonetheless, a high fraction (~38% in Sheen et al. 2012 and ~20% in Oh et al. 2018) of galaxies with post-merging features have been reported in deep (>~28 mag/arcsec2) optical surveys of cluster galaxies. The authors argue that these galaxies could have merged outside of the cluster and, later, fallen into the cluster, sustaining their long-lasting post-merging features. On the other hand, when galaxy clusters interact, galaxy orbits might be destabilized resulting in a higher galaxy merger rate. To test this idea, we measure the ongoing-merger fraction of galaxies in deep DECam mosaic data of seven Abell clusters (A754, A2399, A2670, A3558, A3574, A3659 and A3716) with a variety of dynamical states (0.016

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.35 no.2
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• pp.39.1-39.1
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• 2010

We study the effects of the cluster environment on galactic morphology by defining a dimensionless angular momentum parameter ld, to obtain a quantitative and objective measure of galaxy type. The use of this physical parameter allows us to take the study of morphological transformations in clusters beyond the measurements of merely qualitative parameters, e.g. S/E ratios, to a more physical footing. To this end, we employ an extensive SDSS sample, with galaxies associated with Abell galaxy clusters. The sample contains 93 relaxed Abell clusters and over 34,000 individual galaxies. We find that the median ld value tends to decrease as we approach the cluster center, with different dependences according to the mass of the galaxies and the hosting cluster; low and intermediate mass galaxies showing a strong dependence, while massive galaxies seems to show, at all radii, low ld values. By analysing trends in ld as functions of the nearest galactic neighbour environment, clustercentric radius and velocity dispersion of clusters, we can identify clearly the leading physical processes at work. We find that in massive clusters (s > 700 km/s), the interaction with the cluster central region dominates, whilst in smaller clusters galaxy-galaxy interactions are chiefly responsible for driving galactic morphological transformations.

• Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.35 no.3
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• pp.111-121
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• 2002

We have measured the correlation functions of the optically selected clusters of galaxies in the Abell and the APM catalogs, and of the X-ray clusters in the X-ray-Brightest Abell-type Clusters of galaxies (XBACs) catalog and the Brightest Clusters Sample (BCS). The same analysis method and the same method of characterizing the resulting correlation functions are applied to all observational samples. We have found that the amplitude of the correlation function of the APM clusters is much higher than what has been previously claimed, in particular for richer subsamples. The correlation length of the APM clusters with the richness R $\ge$ 70 (as defined by the APM team) is found to be $r_0 = 25.4_{-3.0}^{+3.1}\;h^{-1}$ Mpc. The amplitude of correlation function is about 2.4 times higher than that of Croft et al. (1997). The correlation lengths of the Abell clusters with the richness class RC $\ge$ 0 and 1 are measured to be $r_0 = 17.4_{-1.1}^{+1.2}$ and $21.0_{-2.8}^{+2.8}\;h^{-1}$ Mpc, respectively, which is consistent with our results for the APM sample at the similar level of richness. The richness dependence of cluster correlations is found to be $r_0= 0.40d_c + 3.2$ where $d_c$ is the mean intercluster separation. This is identical in slope with the Bahcall & West (1992)'s estimate, but is inconsistent with the weak dependence of Croft et al. (1997). The X-ray bright Abell clusters in the XBACs catalog and the X-ray selected clusters in the BCS catalog show strong clustering. The correlation length of the XBACs clusters with $L_x {\ge}0.65{\times} 10^{44}\;h^{-2}erg\;s^{-1}$ is $30.3_{-6.5}^{+8.2}\;h^{-1}$ Mpc, and that of the BCS clusters with $L_x {\ge}0.70{\times} 10^{44}\;h^{-2}erg\;s^{-1}$ is $30.2_{-8.9}^{+9.8}\;h^{-1}$ Mpc. The clustering strength of the X-ray clusters is much weaker than what is expected from the optical clusters.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.38 no.2
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• pp.37.2-37.2
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• 2013

Recently it turns out that simple-looking elliptical galaxies and lenticular galaxies are more complex and intriguing than expected. One of the most surprising and intriguing findings in extragalactic studies during the last two decades is a discovery that color distribution of the globular clusters in these galaxies is bimodal, suggesting that there are two subpopulations: blue and red globular clusters. We present a determination of the two-dimensional shape parameters of the blue and red globular cluster systems (GCSs) in a large number of bright elliptical galaxies and lenticular galaxies. The position angles of both and red GCSs show a correlation with those of the stellar light distribution, showing that the major axes of the GCSs are well aligned with those of their host galaxies. However, the shapes of the red GCSs show a tight correlation with the stellar light distribution as with the rotation property of their host galaxies, while the shapes of the blue GCSs do much less. These provide clear geometric evidence that the origins of the blue and red globular clusters are distinct and that these galaxies may have dual halos: a blue (metal-poor) halo and a red (metal-rich) halo. These two halos show significant differences in metallicity, structure, and kinematics, indicating that they are formed in two distinguishable ways. The red halos might have formed via dissipational processes with rotation, while the blue halos are through accretion.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.38 no.2
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• pp.40.2-40.2
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• 2013

Although galaxy mergers are thought to play an important role in forming elliptical galaxies, mergers in galaxy clusters have drawn less attention compared to mergers in field environments because galaxies with high peculiar velocities are unlikely to merge with each other. However, comparable fractions of merger features in cluster galaxies have been reported from deep imaging of Abell clusters, suggesting the relevance of mergers in the transformation of cluster early-type galaxies (Sheen et al. 2012). As a more direct approach to understanding the origin of tidal features in clusters, we perform hydrodynamic re-simulations on a cluster of galaxies. Based on mock observation images of the simulated cluster galaxies, we construct and analyze the cluster early-type galaxy sample in a consistent manner with Sheen et al. 2012. We find that the fraction of tidal feature from the simulated cluster is comparable to that of the observation. Evolutionary history of the galaxies with merger features shows that most of the mergers responsible for the merger features in the present originate from outside the cluster more than 2Gyrs ago. We also find that many of the galaxies with tidal features show correlations with subgroups in the cluster. All these results suggest that merger features in the cluster are due to preprocessing before accretion into the cluster.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.44 no.1
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• pp.38.4-38.4
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• 2019

Ultra-diffuse galaxies (UDGs) are intriguing in the sense that they are much larger than dwarf galaxies but have much lower surface brightness than normal galaxies. To date, UDGs have been found only in the local universe. Taking advantage of deep and high-resolution HST images, we search for UDGs in massive galaxy clusters in the distant universe. In this work, we present our search results of UDGs in three massive clusters of the Hubble Frontier Fields: Abell 2744 (z=0.308), Abell S1063 (z=0.348), and Abell 370 (z=0.375). These clusters are the most distant and massive among the host systems of known UDGs. The color-magnitude diagrams of these clusters show that UDGs are mainly located in the faint end of the red sequence. This means that most UDGs in these clusters consist of old stars. Interestingly, we found a few blue UDGs, which implies that they had recent star formation. The radial number densities of UDGs clearly decrease in the central region of the clusters in contrast to those of bright galaxies which keep rising. This implies that a large fraction of UDGs in the central region were tidally disrupted. These features are consistent with those of UDGs in nearby galaxy clusters. We estimate the total number of UDGs (N(UDG)) in each cluster. The abundance of UDGs shows a tight relation with the virial masses (M_200) of thier host systems: M_200 \propto N(UDG)^(1.01+/-0.05). This slope is found to be very close to one, indicating that efficiency of UDGs does not significantly depend on the host environments. Furthermore, estimation of dynamical masses of UDGs indicates that most UDGs have dwarf-like masses (M_200 < 10^11 M_Sun), but a few UDGs have $L{\ast}$-like masses (M_200 > 10^11 M_Sun). In summary, UDGs in distant massive clusters are found to be similar to those in the local universe.