• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.40 no.2
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• pp.27.4-28
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• 2015

The GMT-Consortium Large Earth Finder (G-CLEF) is an optical band echelle spectrograph that has been selected as the first light instrument for the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT). G-CLEF is a general purpose high dispersion instrument that is fiber-fed and capable of extremely precise radial velocity measurements. G-CLEF has undergone a preliminary design review in April 2015 and is now entering final design phase and construction. G-CLEF has been designed to measure the mass of Earth-analogue exoplanets and to make critical observations in near-field and high-Z cosmology. We describe the G-CLEF instrument and several key science missions that shaped the development of G-CLEF. First light on the GMT is scheduled for late 2020.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.39 no.2
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• pp.86.1-86.1
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• 2014

Two substellar companion candidates with planetary mass, around a T-Tauri star in the ${\rho}$ Ophiuchi star-forming region, are discovered by results of Subaru Telescope's near-infrared imaging. Candidates are separated by 1400au and 500au. If these candidates were real companions, they are the widest-orbit and the lowest mass planetary-mass companions(PMCs) candidates. This discovery may suggest that PMCs form via extreme case of cloud core fragmentation for multiple stars. And also stellar disk are imaged by HiCIAO, hight contrast instrument for exoplanets and disks, with Subaru Telescope. This could be the first case, which imaged both of planetary mass companions and disk around same star. Even two companions candidates are not bounded around the star, they still could be one of the lowest mass objects. In this presentation, I will discuss about observations and confirmations of these objects, and the latest results about their properties.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.43 no.1
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• pp.41.1-41.1
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• 2018

We introduce a current status and future plans of Korea Microlensing Telescope Network (KMTNet) microlensing experiments, which include an observational strategy, pipeline, event-finder, and collaborations with Spitzer. The KMTNet experiments were initiated in 2015. From 2016, KMTNet observes 27 fields including 6 main fields and 21 subfields. In 2017, we have finished the DIA photometry for all 2016 and 2017 data. Thus, it is possible to do a real-time DIA photometry from 2018. The DIA photometric data is used for finding events from the KMTNet event-finder. The KMTNet event-finder has been improved relative to the previous version, which already found 857 events in 4 main fields of 2015. We have applied the improved version to all 2016 data. As a result, we find that 2597 events are found, and out of them, 265 are found in KMTNet-K2C9 overlapping fields. For increasing the detection efficiency of event-finder, we are working on filtering false events out by machine-learning method. In 2018, we plan to measure event detection efficiency of KMTNet by injecting fake events into the pipeline near the image level. Thanks to high-cadence observations, KMTNet found fruitful interesting events including exoplanets and brown dwarfs, which were not found by other groups. Masses of such exoplanets and brown dwarfs are measured from collaborations with Spitzer and other groups. Especially, KMTNet has been closely cooperating with Spitzer from 2015. Thus, KMTNet observes Spitzer fields. As a result, we could measure the microlens parallaxes for many events. Also, the automated KMTNet PySIS pipeline was developed before the 2017 Spitzer season and it played a very important role in selecting the Spitzer target. For the 2018 Spitzer season, we will improve the PySIS pipeline to obtain better photometric results.

• Publications of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.17-28
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• 2012

We present an analysis of the papers published in the journals Nature and Science in the years from 2006 to 2010. During this period, 7788 papers in total were published in the two journals. This includes 544 astronomy papers that correspond to 7.0% of the papers in 'all' research fields and 18.9% of those in the field of 'physical sciences'. The sub-fields of research of the astronomy papers are distributed, in a descending order of the number of papers, in Solar System, stellar astronomy, galaxies and the universe, the Milky Way Galaxy, and exoplanets. The observational facilities used for the studies are mainly ground-based telescopes (31.1%), spacecrafts (27.0%), and space telescopes (22.8%), while 16.0% of papers did not use any noticeable facilities and 1.7% used other facilities. Korean scientists have published 86 papers (33 in Nature and 53 in Science), which is 1.10% of all the papers (N = 7788) in the two journals. The share of papers by Korean astronomers among the scientific papers by Koreans is 8.14%, slightly higher than the contribution of astronomy papers (7.0%) in both journals.

• Publications of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.32 no.1
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• pp.343-345
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• 2017

We present the development of a spectral dispersion device for wideband spectroscopy for which the primary scientific objective is the characterization of transiting exoplanets. The principle of the disperser is simple: a grating is fabricated on the surface of a prism. The direction of the spectral dispersion power of the prism is crossed with the grating. Thus, the prism separates the spectrum into individual orders while the grating produces a spectrum for each order. In this work, ZnS was selected as the material for the cross disperser, which was designed to cover the wavelength region, ${\lambda}=0.6-13{\mu}m$, with a spectral resolving power, $R{\geq}50$. A disperser was fabricated, and an evaluation of its surface was conducted. Two spectrometer designs, one adopting ZnS (${\lambda}=0.6-13{\mu}m$, $R{\geq}300$) and the other adopting CdZnTe (${\lambda}=1-23{\mu}m$, $R{\geq}250$), are presented. The spectrometers, each of which has no moving mechanical parts, consist simply of a disperser, a focusing mirror, and a detector.

• Communications for Statistical Applications and Methods
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.271-281
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• 2013

This paper considers a problem of classification of variable stars based on functional data analysis. For a better understanding of galaxy structure and stellar evolution, various approaches for classification of variable stars have been studied. Several features that explain the characteristics of variable stars (such as color index, amplitude, period, and Fourier coefficients) were usually used to classify variable stars. Excluding other factors but focusing only on the curve shapes of variable stars, Deb and Singh (2009) proposed a classification procedure using multivariate principal component analysis. However, this approach is limited to accommodate some features of the light curve data that are unequally spaced in the phase domain and have some functional properties. In this paper, we propose a light curve estimation method that is suitable for functional data analysis, and provide a classification procedure for variable stars that combined the features of a light curve with existing functional data analysis methods. To evaluate its practical applicability, we apply the proposed classification procedure to the data sets of variable stars from the project STellar Astrophysics and Research on Exoplanets (STARE).

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.35 no.2
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• pp.78.2-78.2
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• 2010

We report the detection of a low-amplitude 380.8-day radial velocity (RV) variations in oscillating K2 III star ${\alpha}$ Ari (HD 12929). We do not found the correlation between RV variations and equivalent widths of chromospheric activity indicators ($H{\alpha}$ and CaII 8662 ${\AA}line$). The bisector analysis shows that bisector velocity span (BVS) and RV variations are not strongly correlated with each other. These result suggest that the RV variations could have been produced either by planetary companion or by the surface spots. If this RV variation is indeed caused by a planetary companion, an orbital solution with a period of P = 381 days, a semi-amplitude of K = 41 m/s, and an eccentricity of e = 0.25 fits the data best. Assuming a possible stellar mass of $M_{\bigstar} = 1.4-5.6 M\odot$, we estimate the minimum mass for the companion of m sini = 1.8-4.5 $M_{Jup}$ with an orbital semi-major axis of 1.2-1.9 AU. If confirmed, our finding gives a support to search for exoplanets around giant stars with multi-periodic oscillations.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.41 no.1
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• pp.79.1-79.1
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• 2016

We investigated the dynamical properties of the K2-3 multi-planet system. Recently three transiting planets are discovered using the extended Kepler2 (K2) mission (Crossfield et al. 2015). We extended their preliminary stability study by considering a substantial longer integration time. Since planet mass is not known from photometry we calculated exoplanets masses using empirical mass-radius relations (Weiss & Marcy 2014). Forward numerical integration was done using the MERCURY integration package (Chambers 1999). Our results demonstrate that this system is stable over a time scale of $10^8years$. Furthermore, we investigated the dynamical effects of a hypothetical planet in the semi-major axis vs eccentricity space. For stable orbits of the hypothetical planet we calculated transit-timing variation (TTV) and radial velocity signals. We find that for a hypothetical perturber with mass 1-13 Mjup, semi-major axis 0.2 - 0.8 AU and eccentricity 0.00-0.47 the following timing signals for the planet K2-3 b is ~ 5 sec, K2-3 c is ~ 130 sec and for K2-3 d is ~ 190 sec. The radial velocity signal of the hypothetical planet is ~ 4 m/s. Using typical transit-timing errors from the K2 mission, we find that the above hypothetical planet would not be detectable. Its radial velocity signal, however, would be detectable using the APF 2.4m telescope or HARPS at the ESO/La Silla Observatory in Chile.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.45 no.1
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• pp.68.1-68.1
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• 2020

외계행성 대기 연구를 위한 투과스펙트럼 관측에 적합한 측분광기를 개발하고 있다. 이 측분광기의 광학적 특성은 380~685nm의 파장범위, FOV 10', R>~400이며, 슬릿부, collimator, VPH grism, imaging lens와 CCD로 구성되어 있는데, 보현산천문대 1.8m 망원경의 CIM(Cassegrain Interface Module)에 카트리지 방식으로 장착되어 사용한다. 그 중 doublet 렌즈 2개를 대칭으로 배치하여 초점거리 280mm가 되도록 만든 collimator는 슬릿을 통과한 f/8 입사광에서 지름 35 mm의 pupil을 만드는데, 이곳에 VPH grism을 설치하였다. collimator 렌즈는 axial spring과 radial spring으로 알루미늄 barrel에 고정하였다. 이 collimator barrel은 CIM에 쉽게 장탈착 할 수 있도록 모듈화 하였다. Collimator Barrel에 대한 구조 해석 결과, 망원경 이동에 따른 중력에 의한 변형은 충분히 작았다. Grism은 슬라이딩 형태로 장착되어 영상 확인도 가능하도록 설계하였다.

• Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.56 no.1
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• pp.35-40
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• 2023

We have been conducting a exoplanet search survey using Bohyunsan Observatory Echelle Spectrograph (BOES) for the last 18 years. We present the detection of exoplanet candidate in orbit around HD 18438 from high-precision radial velocity (RV) mesurements. The target was already reported in 2018 (Bang et al. 2018). They conclude that the RV variations with a period of 719 days are likely to be caused by the pulsations because the Lomb-Scargle periodogram of HIPPARCOS photometric and H_α EW variations for HD 18438 show peaks with periods close to that of RV variations and there were no correlations between bisectors and RV measurements. However, the data were not sufficient to reach a firm conclusion. We obtained more RV data for four years. The longer time baseline yields a more accurate determination with a revised period of 803 ± 5 days and the planetary origin of RV variations with a minimum planetary companion mass of 21 ± 1 M_Jup. Our current estimate of the stellar parameters for HD 18438 makes it currently the largest star with a planetary companion.