• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.44 no.1
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• pp.38.1-38.1
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• 2019

Globular clusters (GCs) are one of the excellent tools to trace the assembly history of their host galaxies. Especially, the ages and abundances of the GCs give important clues about the star formation epochs and merging progenitors. We investigate the stellar population of the GCs in M87 based on a stacking analysis using about 900 MMT/Hectospec spectra of the GCs. We measure the ages, [Z/H], and [a/Fe] from the stacked spectra of the GCs within radial bins based on Lick indices. We find clear radial gradients for [Z/H] and [a/Fe] in the GC system. In addition to the radial trends, we investigate the stellar populations of the GC subgroups divided according to colors, radial velocities, and spatial locations. We discuss the formation history of M87 based on the stellar populations of the GCs.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.45 no.1
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• pp.59.1-59.1
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• 2020

Extremely metal-poor (EMP; [Fe/H] < -3.0) stars are thought to be genuine second-generation of stars because they were born from relatively pristine gas chemically enriched by one or two supernovae. So, the EMP stars presumably originated from outside the Milky Way (MW) are important tracers for the early chemical evolution and assembly history of the MW. In this study, we present the preliminary results on the early assembly history of the MW inferred by associating the dynamical properties of our EMP stars with those of known substructures in the MW. We also explore the star formation history of the progenitor galaxies of our EMP stars by investigating the elemental abundances of the EMP stars associated with the substructure.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.39 no.2
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• pp.67.2-67.2
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• 2014

The presence of multiple populations is now well-established in most globular clusters in the Milky Way. In light of this progress, here we suggest a new model explaining the origin of the Sandage period-shift and the difference in mean period of type ab RR Lyrae variables between the two Oosterhoff groups. In our models, the instability strip in the metal-poor group II clusters, such as M15, is populated by second generation stars (G2) with enhanced helium and CNO abundances, while the RR Lyraes in the relatively metal-rich group I clusters like M3 are mostly produced by first generation stars (G1) without these enhancements. This population shift within the instability strip with metallicity can create the observed period-shift between the two groups, since both helium and CNO abundances play a role in increasing the period of RR Lyrae variables. The presence of more metal-rich clusters having Oosterhoff-intermediate characteristics, such as NGC 1851, as well as of most metal-rich clusters having RR Lyraes with longest periods (group III) can also be reproduced, as more helium-rich third and later generations of stars (G3) penetrate into the instability strip with further increase in metallicity. Therefore, although there are systems where the suggested population shift cannot be a viable explanation, for the most general cases, our models predict that the RR Lyraes are produced mostly by G1, G2, and G3, respectively, for the Oosterhoff groups I, II, and III.

• Publications of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.89-95
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• 2007

The warm ionized medium (WIM) outside classical H II regions is a fundamental gas-phase constituent of the Milky Way and other late-type spiral galaxies, and is traced by faint emission lines at optical wavelengths. We calculate the photoionization models of the WIM in the Galaxy by a stellar UV radiation with the effective temperature 35,000 K assuming not only spherical geometry but also plane parallel geometry, and compare the results with the observed emission line ratios. We also show the dependence of the emission line ratios on various gas-phase abundances. The emergent emission-line ratios are in agreement with the average-values of observed ratios of [S II] ${\lambda}6716/H{\alpha}$, [N II] ${\lambda}6583/H{\alpha}$, [O I] ${\lambda}6300/H{\alpha}$, [O III] ${\lambda}5007/H{\alpha}$, He I ${\lambda}5876/H{\alpha}$. However, their extreme values could not be explained with the photoionization models. It is also shown that the addition of all stellar radiation from the OB stars in the Hipparcos stellar catalog resembles that of an O7-O8 type star.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.36 no.2
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• pp.143.1-143.1
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• 2011

Deep Ca,b,y images obtained from the CTIO 4m Blaco telescope are used to investigate the multiple stellar populations of red giant branch (RGB) and sub-giant branch (SGB) in Galactic globular clusters NGC 6656 and NGC 6723. For NGC 6656, confirming the result of Lee et al. (2009), we find two discrete populations of the RGB stars of which mean color separation is about 0.2 mag in hk[=(Ca-b)-(b-y)] index. Furthermore, we also find the bimodel distribution of the SGB stars in (hk, y) color-magnitude diagram. A new finding is that the (hk, y) color-magnitude diagram of NGC 6723 shows two distinct RGB stars with different calcium abundances of which mean color separation is about 0.12 mag in hk index. This multiple stellar feature has not been observed in previous observation, suggesting that NGC 6723 may also be a possible relic of dwarf galaxies that merged into the Milky Way in the past. Thus our result adds further constraints to the merging scenario of the Galaxy formation. Unfortunately, the split of SGB stars in NGC 6723 is not obvious. We will present some statistical results to compare properties of two populations in two clusters.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.46 no.2
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• pp.65.2-66
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• 2021

Observational studies of supernova (SN) feedback are limited. In our galaxy, most supernova remnants (SNRs) are located in the Galactic plane, so there is contamination from foreground/background sources. SNRs located in other galaxies are too far, so we cannot study them in detail. The Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is a unique place to study the SN feedback due to their proximity, which makes possible to study the structure of individual SNRs in some detail together with their environment. Recently, we carried out a systematic study of 13 LMC SNRs using [P II] (1.189 ㎛) and [Fe II] (1.257 ㎛) narrowband imaging with SIRIUS/IRSF, four SNRs (SN 1987A, N158A, N157B and N206), show [P II]/[Fe II] ratio much higher than the cosmic abundance. While the high ratio of SN 1987A could be due to enhanced abundance in SN ejecta, we do not have a clear explanation for the other cases. We investigate the [P II] knots found in SNRs N206, N157B and N158A, using optical spectra obtained last November with GMOS-S mounted on Gemini-South telescope. We detected several emission lines (e.g., H I, [O I], He I, [O III], [N II] and [S II]) that are present in all three SNRs, among other lines that are only found in some of them (e.g., [Ne III], [Fe III] and [Fe II]). Various line ratios are measured from the three SNRs, which indicate that the ratios of N157B tend to differ from those of other two SNRs. We will use the abundances of He and N (from the detection of [N II] and He I emission lines), together with velocity measurements to tell whether the origin of the [P II] knots are SN ejecta or CSM/ISM. For this purpose we have built a family of radiative shock with self-consistent pre-ionization using MAPPINGS 5.1.18, with shock velocities in the range of 100 to 475 km/s. We will compare the observed and modeled line fluxes for different depletion factors.

• 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.