• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.40 no.1
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• pp.79.2-79.2
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• 2015

The $M_{BH}-{\sigma}$ relation for galaxies is a stand-out illustration of the co-evolution of galaxies and their central supermassive black holes (SMBHs); however, how this co-evolution occurs and whether this relation holds for SMBHs of the early universe is still a matter of debate. In order to study this at higher redshifts, quasi-stellar objects (QSOs) are the best targets, due to their large sample size and effective $M_{BH}$ estimation. Nevertheless, it is difficult to examine properties of their host galaxies, simply due to the sheer brightness of the QSO itself. Here, we discuss a distinctive method in studying these QSO host galaxies, via gravitational lensing (GL). GL offers a unique approach in determining the mass of the lens object, in this case the host galaxy. QSOs from the SDSS quasar catalog were searched in the Hubble Space Telescope archives, and GL features around them were visually inspected. One such candidate is SDSS J1114-00; to increase its robustness as a GL system candidate, it was observed with the Inamori-Magellan Areal Camera & Spectrograph (IMACS) on the Magellan Baade Telescope at Las Campanas Observatory, to check whether the GL features have identical colors, meaning they are likely to originate from the same source. After confirmation of such GL systems, a sufficiently large sample will enable us to examine the $M_{BH}-{\sigma}$ relation at various redshifts, and in turn, investigate the co-evolution of SMBHs and their host galaxies.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.40 no.1
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• pp.51.4-52
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• 2015

From 2010 to 2014, CQUEAN (Camera for QUasars in EArly uNiverse) has been operated for the observation at the 82 inch Otto Struve Telescope of the McDonald Observatory, US. This camera is optimized at wavelength range of 0.7 - 1.1 um with seven (g', r', I', z', Y, Iz and Is) broad-band filters for the survey of high redshift (z > 5) quasars in the early universe. We are upgrading this system to identify more details of SED (Spectral Energy Distribution) of quasar candidates and other astronomical sources. The SQUEAN is comprised of a focal reducer, a CCD camera, a new filter wheel, new auto guiding system and new control software. The new filter wheel consists of interchangeable cartridges for various wavelength and size of filters. 50 nm medium bandwidth filters from 600 - 1050 nm, seven SDSS (Sloan Digital Sky Survey) filters and Johnson-Cousin BVRI filters are installed for now. We also have a plan to use narrow band interference filters to classify high redshift quasars or to obtain SEDs of interesting astronomical sources in details more efficiently. We also developed KAP82 (Kyung Hee University Auto guiding Package for 82 inch telescope) for auto guiding software. CQUEAN and SQUEAN have been developed by CEOU (Center for the Exploration of the Origin of the Universe).

• Bulletin of the Korean Space Science Society
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• 2011.04a
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• pp.23.1-23.1
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• 2011

The SMT is a subsystem of the UFFO (Ultra-Fast Flash Observatory) pathfinder onboard the Lomonosov spacecraft planed to be launched in November 2011. The UFFO is designed for extremely fast observation of optical afterglow of Gamma Ray Burst (GRB). This study is primarily concerned with performance measurement of the SMT optical system under the integration and test phase. SMT is a 100mm Ritchey-Chretien type telescope with a motorized slewing mirror and a $256{\times}256$ pixels Intensified Charge-Coupled Device (ICCD) of 22.2${\mu}m$ in pixel size. SMT is designed to operate over the wavelength coverage between 200 nm and 650 nm. It has 17 arcmin FOV (Field of View), providing 4arcsec in detector pixel resolution. In this study, we describe the integration and test process of the SMT optical system and interim performance measurement results with motorized slewing mirror and ICCD.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.42 no.1
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• pp.34.3-35
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• 2017

Spectral energy distribution camera for QUasars in EArly uNiverse (SQUEAN) is a successor of Camera for Quasars in EArly uNiverse (CQUEAN) which was developed by Center for the Exploration of the Origin of the Universe and operated at the 2.1 m Otto Struve Telescope in the McDonald Observatory, USA, since 2010. The software of SQUEAN controls a science camera, a guiding camera, and a filter wheel, and communicates with the telescope control system (TCS). It has been constantly revised and modularized according to the upgrades of the TCS and the hardware changes. Recently we have implemented the stable network communication and the semi-automatic focusing modules to enhance observational convenience. In this presentation we describe the current status of the SQUEAN control software and introduce a software architecture which is optimized on efficient astronomical observations.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.45 no.1
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• pp.34.3-34.3
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• 2020

Faint z ~ 5 quasars with M1450 ~ -23 mag are known to be the potentially important contributors to the ultraviolet ionizing background in the post-reionization era. However, their number density has not been well determined, making it difficult to assess their role in the early ionization of the intergalactic medium (IGM). In this work, we present the updated results of our z ~ 5 quasar survey using the Infrared Medium-deep Survey (IMS), a near-infrared imaging survey covering an area of 85 square degrees. From our spectroscopic observations with the Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph (GMOS) on the Gemini-South 8 m Telescope, we discovered eight new quasars at z ~ 5 with -26.1 ≤ M1450 ≤ -23.3. Combining our IMS faint quasars with the brighter Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) quasars, we derive, for the first time, the z ~ 5 quasar luminosity function (QLF) without any fixed parameters down to the magnitude limit of M1450 = -23 mag. We find that the faint-end slope of the QLF is very flat (-1.2) with a characteristic luminosity of -25.7 mag. The number density of z ~ 5 quasars from the QLF gives lower ionizing emissivity and ionizing photon density than those in previous works. These results imply that quasars are responsible for only 10-20% of the photons required to completely ionize the IGM at z ~ 5, disfavoring the idea that quasars alone could have ionized the IGM at z ~ 5.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.40 no.1
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• pp.72.4-73
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• 2015

Over the last decade, more than 50 quasars have been discovered at redshift about 6 when reionization of the universe occurred. However, most of them are luminous quasars (zAB < 21 mag), implying that such a biased quasar sample, which cannot represent the entire population of quasars at z~6, is not enough to understand the properties of quasars in the early universe. Recently, we have been performing the Infrared Medium-deep Survey (IMS), a moderately wide (120 deg2) and deep (JAB ~ 22.5 - 23 mag) near-infrared imaging survey. Combining this with the optical (ugriz) imaging data from the CFHT Legacy Survey (CFHTLS), we have identified more than 10 faint quasar candidates at z~6 in the IMS field by using multiple color selection criteria. From now on, we will perform spectroscopic confirmations of these faint quasar candidates with IMACS on the Magellan Baade Telescope at Las Campanas Observatory and GMOS on the Gemini South Telescope at Gemini Observatory. The confirmed quasars will be used to constrain the faint-end slope of the quasar luminosity function at z~6 and calculate the ratio of quasar ionizing flux to required flux for reionization of the universe. Moreover, these confirmed quasars will be followed up with near-infrared spectroscopy to determine their black hole masses and Eddington ratios to check the rapidness of their growth.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.43 no.1
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• pp.31.3-32
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• 2018

Supernovae (SNe) are well known as good cosmological distance probes owing to their brightness. Specifically, type Ia SNe contribute greatly to our understanding of acceleration of cosmic expansion. However, type IIP supernovae are the most common type of SNe and have been found out to a large redshift, so the application of these SNe as distance indicators is promising. IMSNG is a project for monitoring nearby galaxies (<50Mpc) to catch early light curves of transients and get inspections of their progenitors. The daily monitoring observation allows us to construct a dense light curve of SNe, too. In this talk, we present the light curves of two SNe IIP, SN 2014cx (NGC337) and SN 2017eaw (NGC6946), using our IMSNG data. A newly developed technique, the Photometric Color Method (PCM), employs only photometric data to estimate distances for SNe IIP. We present the distances to our targets measured through PCM and compare this to that of obtained via other methods.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.44 no.1
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• pp.39.1-39.1
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• 2019

Not all stars in the Universe are gravitationally bounded to galaxies. Since first discovered in 1951, observations have revealed that a significant fraction of stars fills the space between galaxies in local (low-redshift) galaxy clusters, observed as diffuse intracluster light (ICL). Theoretical models provide mechanisms for the production of intracluster stars as tidally stripped material or debris generated through numerous galaxy interactions during the hierarchical growth of the galaxy cluster. These mechanisms predict that most intracluster stars in local galaxy clusters are long-accumulated material since z~1. However, there is no observational evidence to verify this prediction. Here we report observations of abundant ICL for a massive (above $10^{14}$ solar masses) galaxy cluster at a redshift of z=1.24, when the Universe was 5 billion years old. We found that more than 10 per cent of the total light of the cluster is contributed by the diffuse ICL out to 110 kpc from the center of the cluster, comparable to 5-20 per cent in local, massive galaxy cluster. Furthermore, we found that the colour of the brightest cluster galaxy located in the core of the cluster is consistent with that of the ICL out to 200 kpc. Our results demonstrate that the majority of the intracluster stars present in the local Universe, contrary to most previous theoretical and observational studies, were built up during a short period and early (z>1) in the history of the Virgo-like massive galaxy cluster formation, and might be concurrent with the formation of the brightest cluster galaxy.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.44 no.2
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• pp.38.2-38.2
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• 2019

In the history of universe, galaxies are consistently affected by surrounding medium and neighbor galaxies. These effects control galaxy evolution, making properties of galaxies diverse and dependent on environments. We investigate environments of various types of galaxies and how they affect galaxy properties, such as bar structures and galaxy sizes, etc. First, we present the observational evidence that bars can form from a cluster-cluster interaction. The evidence indicates that bars can form due to a large-scale violent phenomenon, and cluster-cluster interaction should be considered as an important channel for bar formation. Second, we discover for the first time that local early-type galaxies heavier than 1011.2 Msol show a clear environmental dependence in mass-size relation, in such a way that galaxies are as much as 20 - 40% larger in densest environments than in underdense environments. This result suggests that mergers played a significant role in the growth of massive galaxies in dense environments as expected in theory. Lastly, we investigate environments of the most massive galaxies and extremely massive quasars. By doing so, we find that massive galaxies are a much better signpost for galaxy clusters than massive quasars.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.38 no.2
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• pp.69.1-69.1
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• 2013

We describe a survey of quasars in the early universe beyond z=5, which is one of the main sciences of the Infrared Medium-deep Survey (IMS) performed by the Center for the Exploration of the Origin of the Universe (CEOU). We use multi-wavelength archival data such as SDSS, CFHTLS, UKIDSS, and SWIRE, which provide deep images over wide areas sufficient enough for searching high redshift quasars. In addition, we carried out a J-band imaging survey at the United Kingdom InfraRed Telescope (UKIRT) with a depth of ~23 AB and survey area of ~100 $deg^2$, which makes IMS the most suitable survey for finding high redshift quasars at z~7. Also for the quasar candidates at z~5.5, we are conducting observations with the Camera for QUasars in EArly uNiverse (CQUEAN), which are efficient for selecting robust quasar candidate samples in this redshift range. We used various color-color diagrams suitable to the specific redshift ranges, which can reduce the contaminating sources such as M/L/T dwarfs, low redshift galaxies, and instrumental defects. The high redshift quasars we are confirming can provide us with clues to the growth of super massive black holes since z~7. Also by expanding the quasar sample at 5