• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.44 no.2
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• pp.49.2-49.2
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• 2019

We present results from our long-term observing campaign, using the NASA IRTF at Maunakea, to obtain 2 - 4 ㎛ spectra of 118 red point sources in the line of sight to the Galactic Center (GC). Our sample is largely composed of point sources selected from near- and mid-infrared photometry, but also includes a number of massive young stellar objects. Many of these sources show high foreground extinction as shown by deep 3.4 ㎛ aliphatic hydrocarbon absorption feature, which is a characteristic of the diffuse ISM and comes from the long line of sight through the diffuse medium toward the Central Molecular Zone (CMZ), the central 300 pc region of the GC. The deep 3.1 ㎛ H₂O ice absorption band coming from the local, dense material in the GC CMZ suggests that most sources are likely located in the GC CMZ. A few of these sources show weak CCH₃OH ice absorption at 3.535 ㎛, which can provide a strong constraint on the CCH₃OH ice formation in the unique environment of the CMZ. From the best-fitting models, the optical depths of these features are determined and used to generate a well-rounded view of the ice composition across the GC CMZ and the spectral characteristics of massive YSOs in the GC.

• Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.51 no.4
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• pp.89-110
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• 2018

Active Galactic Nucleus (AGN) variability can be used to study the physics of the region in the vicinity of the central black hole. In this paper, we investigated intra-night optical variability of AGN in the COSMOS field in order to understand the AGN instability at the smallest scale. Observations were performed using the KMTNet on three separate nights for 2.5 to 5 hours at a cadence of 20 to 30 min. We find that the observation enables the detection of short-term variability as small as ~ 0.02 and 0.1 mag for R ~ 18 and 20 mag sources, respectively. Using four selection methods (X-rays, mid-infrared, radio, and matching with SDSS quasars), 394 AGN are detected in the $4deg^2$ field of view. After differential photometry and ${\chi}^2$-test, we classify intra-night variable AGN. The fraction of variable AGN (0-8%) is statistically consistent with a null result. Eight out of 394 AGN are found to be intra-night variable in two filters or two nights with a variability level of 0.1 mag, suggesting that they are strong candidates for intra-night variable AGN. Still they represent a small population (2%). There is no sub-category of AGN that shows a statistically significant intra-night variability.

• Bulletin of the Korean Space Science Society
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• 2006.10a
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• pp.33-33
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• 2006

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.40 no.1
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• pp.59.1-59.1
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• 2015

We present hydrodynamic simulations of gas clouds that inflowing from the disk to a few hundred parsec region of the Milky Way. Realistic Galactic structures are included in our simulations by thousands of multipole expansions that describe 6.4 million stellar particles of a self-consistent Galaxy simulation (Baba, Saitoh & Wada, in prep.). We find that a hybrid multipole expansion model with two different basis sets and a thick disk correction well reproduces the overall structures of the Milky Way. We find that the nuclear ring evolves into 240 pc at T~1500 Myr, regardless of the initial size. For most of simulation runs, gas inflow rate to the nuclear region is equilibrated as ~0.02 Msun/yr, and thus accumulated gas mass and star formation activity is stabilized as $6{\times}10^7Msun$ and ~0.02M/yr, respectively. These stabilized values are in a good agreement with estimations for the CMZ. The nuclear ring is off-centered to the Galactic center by the lopsided central mass distribution of the Galaxy model, and thus an asymmetric mass distribution is arose accordingly. The lopsidedness also leads the nuclear ring to be tilted to the Galactic plane and to precess along the Galaxy rotation. In early evolutionary stage when gas clouds start to inflow and form the nuclear ring, the z-directional oscillations of the gas clouds results in the twisted, infinity-shaped nuclear ring. Since the infinity-shaped feature is transient only for first 100 Myr, the current infinity-shape observed in the CMZ may indicate that the CMZ forms quite recently.

• Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.55 no.2
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• pp.23-36
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• 2022

We present a method to determine nitrogen abundance ratios with respect to iron ([N/Fe]) from molecular CN-band features observed in low-resolution (R ~ 2000) stellar spectra obtained by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) and the Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope (LAMOST). Various tests are carried out to check the systematic and random errors of our technique, and the impact of signal-to-noise (S/N) ratios of stellar spectra on the determined [N/Fe]. We find that the uncertainty of our derived [N/Fe] is less than 0.3 dex for S/N ratios larger than 10 in the ranges T_eff = [4000, 6000] K, log g = [0.0, 3.5], [Fe/H] = [-3.0, 0.0], [C/Fe] = [-1.0, +4.5], and [N/Fe] = [-1.0, +4.5], the parameter space that we are interested in to identify N-enhanced stars in the Galactic halo. A star-by-star comparison with a sample of stars with [N/Fe] estimates available from the Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE) also suggests a similar level of uncertainty in our measured [N/Fe], after removing its systematic error. Based on these results, we conclude that our method is able to reproduce [N/Fe] from low-resolution spectroscopic data, with an uncertainty sufficiently small to discover N-rich stars that presumably originated from disrupted Galactic globular clusters.

• Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.56 no.1
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• pp.59-73
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• 2023

The second generation of stars in the globular clusters (GCs) of the Milky Way (MW) exhibit unusually high N, Na, or Al, compared to typical Galactic halo stars at similar metallicities. The halo field stars enhanced with such elements are believed to have originated in disrupted GCs or escaped from existing GCs. We identify such stars in the metallicity range -3.0 < [Fe/H] < 0.0 from a sample of ~36,800 giant stars observed in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope survey, and present their dynamical properties. The N-rich population (NRP) and N-normal population (NNP) among our giant sample do not exhibit similarities in either in their metallicity distribution function (MDF) or dynamical properties. We find that, even though the MDF of the NRP looks similar to that of the MW's GCs in the range of [Fe/H] < -1.0, our analysis of the dynamical properties does not indicate similarities between them in the same metallicity range, implying that the escaped members from existing GCs may account for a small fraction of our N-rich stars, or the orbits of the present GCs have been altered by the dynamical friction of the MW. We also find a significant increase in the fraction of N-rich stars in the halo field in the very metal-poor (VMP; [Fe/H] < -2.0) regime, comprising up to ~20% of the fraction of the N-rich stars below [Fe/H] = -2.5, hinting that partially or fully destroyed VMP GCs may have in some degree contributed to the Galactic halo. A more detailed dynamical analysis of the NRP reveals that our sample of N-rich stars do not share a single common origin. Although a substantial fraction of the N-rich stars seem to originate from the GCs formed in situ, more than 60% of them are not associated with those of typical Galactic populations, but probably have extragalactic origins associated with Gaia Sausage/Enceladus, Sequoia, and Sagittarius dwarf galaxies, as well as with presently unrecognized progenitors.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.39 no.2
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• pp.64.2-64.2
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• 2014

Interacting galaxy pairs are important for study of galaxy evolution. We selected 8,542 interacting galaxy pairs out of 593,514 KIAS-VAGC galaxy sample with 0.02 < z < 0.047 and r_mag <17.6. We then classified by their interacting features into 6 types by visual inspection. We focused on two types whose spiral tidal features extend to the center of early type galaxy (ETG) or to the edge of ETG. We compared galactic parameters of these two types with those of entire 8,542 pairs as well as between the two types. Preliminary result shows both types are very close pairs (projected distance ~ 20 kpc). Spiral galaxies in the center type are more massive but less bright than those in edge type. ETGs in the edge type are brighter but not more massive than those in the center type. The center type has a mass ratio 3.4 times greater than the edge type, but the edge type has a higher angular momentum than the center type.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.42 no.1
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• pp.44.1-44.1
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• 2017

The single lens event OGLE-2015-BLG-1482 has been simultaneously observed from two ground-based surveys and from Spitzer. The Spitzer data exhibit finite-source effects due to the passage of the lens close to or directly over the surface of the source star as seen from Spitzer. Thanks to measurements of the microns parallax and the finite-source effect, we find that the lens of OGLE-2015-BLG-1482 is a very low-mass star with the mass $0.10{\pm}0.02M{\odot}$ or a brown dwarf with the mass $55{\pm}9MJ$, which are respectively located at $DLS=0.80{\pm}0.19kpc$ and $DLS=0.54{\pm}0.08kpc$, and thus it is the first isolated low-mass microlens that has been located in the Galactic bulge. The degeneracy between the two solutions is severe. The fundamental reason for the degeneracy is that the finite-source effect is seen only in a single data point from Spitzer and this single data point gives rise to two ${\rho}$ solutions.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.38 no.2
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• pp.51.2-51.2
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• 2013

Galactic fly-by interactions are believed to be far more frequent than direct mergers, acting as hidden drivers of galaxy evolution. We perform a tree-particle-mesh code GOTPM, and investigate the statistical properties of the fly-by interactions as functions of halo masses and ambient environments. Based on the total energy of the two halos of interest, impulsive fly-by pairs are identified from eventual merger candidates. We find three obvious results as follows: (1) Halos in the high-dense environment experience more frequent mergers and fly-by encounters than those in the low-dense region; (2) In the massive halos, both merger and fly-by fractions evolve more dramatically with time than those in dwarfs; and (3) The fly-by fraction decreases as approaching the present epoch, in contrast to the increase of the merger fraction.

• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.1-26
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• 1998

The structure of the magnetic funnel element in the intermediate polar is con-sidered in terms of an important site for the X-ray absorption and the reemis-sion of the X-ray as the optical light. In this paper the column density and the optiacl depth vary with the filling factor, which is introduced to characterize the structure of matter in the magnetic funnel element. The results of the en-ergy dopendence of the X-ray spectrum and the modulation depth of the X-ray light curve are discussed.