• 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.

• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.105-114
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• 1999

Archival long-slit spectra, covering the wavelength range 4050~5150$\AA$, have been used to investigate the radial behavior of absorption line features (G4300, Fe4383, Ca4455, Fe44531, Fe4668, and H$\beta$) of an eliptical galaxy NGC 5322. The heliocentric recession velocity of NGC 5322 has been derived as 1888$\pm$51kms-1. Metallic absorption lines of NGC 5322 show significant radial gradients through the major axis. The minor axis shows much smaller radial metal line gradients than the major axis. The minor axis shows much smaller radial metal line gradients than the major axis. The mean slopes of Fe line gradients to the major and minor axes of NGC 5322 were estimated as -0.433$\pm$0.064 and -0.242$\pm$0.096, respectively. Significant radial gradients of H$\beta$ absorption of NGC 5322 are also detected both on the major and minor axes. It is shown that the radial metallicity gradients in NGC 5322 are smaller than expected in a simple dissipative collapse model. Rather, dissipationless collapse, such as hierarchical merhing, could have contributed during the initial stage of the galaxy formation.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.40 no.2
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• pp.51.2-51.2
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• 2015

Gravitational lensed quasar systems are usually explained by a source quasar lensed by a galaxy that can be approximated by an isothermal sphere. But most galaxies have a supermassive black hole (SMBH) at its center. We study the lensing by an isothermal sphere with a central SMBH. The additional lensing effects of a SMBH on the number, position, and magnification of lensed images are investigated. We apply the analysis to observed lens systems including Q0957+561. We also study the lensing by an elliptical mass distribution with a SMBH.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.30 no.1
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• pp.39.1-39.1
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• 2005

• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.1-10
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• 1987

Results of N-body simulation of dissipationless cold collapse of spherical gravitating system are presented. We compared the results with properties of elliptical. The system gradually evolved to triaxial system. The projected density profile is in good agreement with the de Vaucouleur's r¼ law and the velocity dispersion profile is consistent with observations. In addition to triaxial instability, it seems that there is another instability.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.42 no.1
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• pp.29.1-29.1
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• 2017

I present new near-infrared (NIR) photometry of globular cluster (GC) systems associated to a cD galaxy NGC 4874 in the core of the Coma cluster and 16 early-type galaxies in the Fornax and Virgo clusters of galaxies using the Infrared Channel of the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3/IR) on board the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). Combining these high-resolution NIR data with new HST Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) optical photometry for NGC 4874 and existing ACS GC catalogs from the ACS Fornax and Virgo Cluster Surveys, I have examined for the first time the GC systems in a statistically significant optical/NIR sample of galaxies spanning a wide range of luminosities and colors. A primary goal of this study is to explore empirically whether the distributions of purely optical and hybrid optical - NIR color indices for extragalactic GCs have different forms and whether the relations between these color indices are nonlinear, indicating that they behave differently with underlying metallicity. I find that some GC systems of large galaxies in our sample show color bimodalities that differ between the optical and optical - NIR colors, in the sense that they have disparate ratios of "blue" and "red" peak GCs, as well as differing ratios in their color dispersions. Consistent with these results, I find empirically that the dependence of hybrid optical-NIR color on purely optical color is nonlinear, with an inflection at intermediate metallicities. These findings underscore the importance of understanding the nature of galaxy-to-galaxy variations in the GC color distributions and color-color relations, as well as the exact forms of the color-metallicity transformations, in interpreting the observational data on GC color bimodality. Our ACS data for NGC 4874 shows that its GC system exhibits a very strong blue tilt, implying a very steep mass-metallicity scaling, and the centroid of this GC system is offset by $4{\pm}1kpc$ from the luminosity center of NGC 4874, in the direction of NGC 4872. Finally, I discuss the asymmetrical GC distribution around a dwarf elliptical galaxy in Coma that has a very high relative velocity with respect to the cluster mean at small clustercentric radius.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.44 no.2
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• pp.77.3-77.3
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• 2019

We present an analysis of the stellar population of compact elliptical galaxies (cEs) in various environments. Following conventional selection criteria of cEs, we created a list of cE candidates in the redshift range of z < 0.05 using SDSS DR12 catalog. We finally selected cEs with low-luminosity (Mg > 18.7 mag), small effective radius (Re < 600 pc), and high velocity dispersion (> 60 kms-1). We divide our cE sample into those inside and outside of the one virial radius of the bright (Mr < -21 mag) nearby host galaxy which is then defined as cEs with (cEw) and without (cEw/o) host galaxy, respectively. We investigated the stellar population properties of cEs based on the Hb, Mgb, Fe 5270, and Fe 5335 line strengths from the OSSY catalog. We found that cEw has a systematically higher metallicity than cEw/o. In the velocity dispersion-Mgb distribution, while cEw/o follows the relation of early-type galaxies, cEw are found to have a systematically higher metallicity than cEw/o at a given velocity dispersion. The different feature in the metallicity between cEw and cEw/o can suggest that two different scenarios can be provided in the formation of cEs. cEw would be the remnant cores of the massive progenitor galaxies that their outer parts have been tidally stripped by massive neighbor galaxies (i.e., nurture origin). On the other hand, cEw/o are likely to be faint-end of early-type galaxies maintaining in-situ evolution (i.e., nurture origin).

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.41 no.1
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• pp.33.1-33.1
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• 2016

Dwarf elliptical galaxies (dEs), the most abundant galaxy type in clusters, were recently shown to exhibit a wide variety in their properties. Particularly, the presence of blue cores in some dEs, what we call dE(bc), supports the scenario of late-type galaxy infall and subsequent transformation into red, quiescent dEs. While several transformation mechanisms for these dE(bc)s within cluster environment have been proposed, all these processes are able to explain only some of the observational properties of dEs. In this context, internal kinematic properties of dE(bc)s provide the most crucial evidence to discriminate different processes for the formation of these galaxies. We present Gemini Multi Object Spectrograph (GMOS) long-slit spectroscopy of two dE(bc)s in the Virgo cluster. We obtained radial profiles of velocity and velocity dispersion out to ~1.3 effective radius. We found that two dE(bc)s exhibit kinematically decoupled components as well as distinct peculiar features in velocity profiles, supporting the scenario of mergers. We also found that these galaxies are structurally compatible with low surface brightness component of blue compact dwarf galaxies. We suggest that a part of dE(bc)s in the Virgo Cluster were formed through galaxy merger in low density environment such as galaxy group or outskirt of the cluster, and then were quenched by subsequent effects within cluster environment.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.40 no.1
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• pp.73.1-73.1
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• 2015

Isolated galaxies in low-density regions are significant in the sense that they are least affected by the hierarchical pattern of galaxy growth and interactions with perturbers at least for the last few Gyr. To form a comprehensive picture of the star formation history of isolated galaxies, we construct a catalog of isolated galaxies and their comparison sample in relatively denser environments. The galaxies are drawn from SDSS DR7 in the redshift range of 0.025 < z < 0.044. We performed visual inspection and classified their morphology following the Hubble classification scheme. We have investigated the color-magnitude diagram and found elliptical and unbarred spiral galaxies in isolated systems are relatively fainter and bluer than those in denser regions. For the spectroscopic study, we make use of the OSSY catalog (Oh et al. 2011). Our analysis on the absorption-line properties based on the comparison with stellar population models suggests that isolated elliptical galaxies are likely to be younger and metal poorer, while isolated Sc-type galaxies seem to have older luminosity-weighted ages, than their high-density counterpart. In addition, according to the BPT diagnostics, early-type galaxies among isolated galaxies are rather evenly classified into star forming, composite, Seyfert and LINER, whereas their comparisons are mainly populated in the LINER region. On the other hand, late-type galaxies do not show any prominent difference. We discuss the evolutionary histories of isolated galaxies in the context of the standard ${\Lambda}CDM$ cosmology.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.45 no.1
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• pp.32.2-32.2
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• 2020

Massive Compact Elliptical Galaxies (MCEGs) found in the local universe are as massive as normal galaxies but extremely compact (M∗ > 1011 Msun, Reff < 1.5 kpc). They are considered to be the relics of red nugget galaxies found at high redshift. They are not likely to have undergone many mergers, keeping their original mass and size. Moreover, it is expected that they host a dominant population of red (metal-rich) globular clusters rather than blue (metal-poor) ones. Indeed, Beasley et al. (2018) found that the color distribution of the cluster system of NGC 1277 is unimodal, showing only a red population. However, NGC 1277 is the only case whose cluster system was studied among MCEGs. In this study, we investigate globular cluster systems of 14 nearby MCEGs with a homogeneous data set of HST/WFC3 F814W/F160W archive images. We detect tens to hundreds of globular clusters in each galaxy and examine their color distributions. Surprisingly, the fractions of red globular clusters are similar to those of normal galaxies, and are much lower than that of NGC 1277. We additionally obtain Gemini/GMOS-N g'r'i' images of PGC 70520, one of the 14 nearby MCEGs, to detect more globular clusters from deeper and wider images. We will discuss the results from the Gemini data combined with the results from the HST data in relation with the formation of MCEGs.