• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.40 no.1
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• pp.77.2-77.2
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• 2015

Galaxies are known to evolve passively in the cluster environment. Indeed, much evidence for HI stripping has been found in cluster galaxies to date, which is likely to be connected to their low star formation rate. What is still puzzling however, is that the molecular gas, which is believed to be more directly related to star formation, shows no significant difference in its fraction between the cluster population and the field galaxies. Therefore, HI stripping alone does not seem to be enough to fully understand how galaxies become passive in galaxy clusters. Intriguingly, our recent high resolution CO study of a subsample of Virgo spirals which are undergoing strong ICM pressure has revealed a highly disturbed molecular gas morphology and kinematics. The morphological and kinematical peculiarities in their CO data have many properties in common with those of HI gas in the sample, indicating that strong ICM pressure in fact can have impacts on dense gas deep inside of a galaxy. This implies that it is the molecular gas conditions rather than the molecular gas stripping which is more responsible for quenching of star formation in cluster galaxies. In this study, using multi transitions of 12CO and 13CO, we investigate the density and temperature distributions of CO gas of a Virgo spiral galaxy, NGC 4402 to probe the physical and chemical properties of molecular gas and their relations to star formation activities.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.39 no.2
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• pp.42.2-42.2
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• 2014

We investigate the history of formation of ~400 galaxies in four Abell clusters at 0.04

• Publications of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.101-105
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• 2010

Taking the great advantage of Subaru's wide field coverage both in the optical and in the near infrared, we have been providing panoramic views of distant clusters and their surrounding environments over the wide redshift range of 0:4 < z < 3. From our unique data sets, a consistent picture has been emerging that the star forming activity is once enhanced and then truncated in galaxy groups in the outskirts of clusters during the course of cluster assembly at z < 1. Such activity is shifted into cluster cores as we go further back in time to z ~ 1.5. At z = 2 - 2.5, we begin to enter the epoch when massive galaxies are actually forming in the cluster core. And by z ~ 3, we eventually go beyond the major epoch of massive galaxy formation. It is likely that the environmental dependence of star forming activity is at least partly due to the external environmental effects such as galaxy-galaxy interaction in medium density regions at z < 1, while the intrinsic effect of galaxy formation bias overtakes the external effect at higher redshifts, resulting in a large star formation activity in the cluster center.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.44 no.2
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• pp.39.3-39.3
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• 2019

Ram pressure stripping due to the intracluster medium (ICM) is an important environmental process, which causes star formation quenching by effectively removing cold interstellar gas from galaxies in dense environments. The evidence of diffuse atomic gas stripping has been reported in several HI imaging studies. However, it is still under debate whether molecular gas (i.e., a more direct ingredient for star formation) can be also affected and/or stripped by ram pressure. The goal of this thesis is to understand the impact of ram pressure on the molecular gas content of cluster galaxies and hence star formation activity. To achieve this, we conducted a series of detailed studies on the molecular gas properties of three Virgo spiral galaxies with clear signs of active HI gas stripping (NGC 4330, NGC 4402, and NGC 4522) based on high-resolution CO data obtained from the Submillimeter Array (SMA) and Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). As a result, we find the evidence that the molecular gas disk also gets affected by ram pressure in similar ways as HI even well inside of the stellar disk. In addition, we detected extraplanar 13CO clumps in one of the sample, which is the first case ever reported in ram pressure stripped galaxies. By analyzing multi-wavelength data (e.g., Hα, UV, HI, and CO), we discuss detailed processes of how ram pressure affects star formation activities and hence evolution of cluster galaxies. We also discuss the origin of extraplanar 13CO, and how ram pressure can potentially contribute to the chemical evolution of the ICM.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.38 no.2
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• pp.46.2-46.2
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• 2013

We utilize Sloan Digital Sky Survey DR7 spectroscopic data of ~380 star forming galaxies in the Virgo cluster to investigate their chemical properties depending on the environments. The chemical evolution of galaxies is linked to their star formation histories as well as to the gas interchange in different environments. We derived star formation rate (SFR) and gaseous metallicity (e.g., oxygen abundance) of star forming galaxies. Combining with GALEX ultraviolet photometry and ALFALFA HI 21 cm data, we examine the relations between SFRs, metallicity, and HI deficiency of galaxies in various regions of the Virgo cluster. We also quantify the degree of ram pressure around galaxy using the ROSAT X-ray surface brightness map. We discuss environmental effects on the chemical properties and evolution of star forming galaxies.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.37 no.2
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• pp.88.1-88.1
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• 2012

We utilize Sloan Digital Sky Survey DR7 spectroscopic data of ~340 star forming galaxies in the Virgo cluster to investigate their chemical properties depending on the environments. The chemical evolution of galaxies is linked to their star formation histories (SFHs), as well as to the gas interchange in different environments. In this sense, galaxy metallicity could be an observable parameter providing information on the impact of the environment on the galaxy SFH and/or the galaxy gas content. Thus, we derived gaseous metallicity (e.g., oxygen abundance) of star forming galaxies located in different regions of the Virgo cluster using well-known empirical calibrations. We also estimated their star formation rate (SFR) using H alpha luminosity. Inorder to investigate the chemical properties of these galaxies, we examined relations between various parameters: metallicity vs. luminosity, SFR vs. luminosity, and metallicity vs. cluster-centric radius. From our results, we discuss environmental effects of cluster to the chemical properties of star forming galaxies.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.44 no.2
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• pp.75.2-75.2
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• 2019

This poster introduces the ongoing "Narrow-band Ca Photometry for Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxies" project and presents the latest results. The project aims to explain the formation and evolution of dwarf spheroidal galaxies by examining the structural properties of stellar populations as a function of metallicity. To overcome the lack of stars with known spectroscopic metallicities for dwarf spheroidal galaxies, we apply the hk index as a photometric metallicity indicator to three galaxies-Draco, Sextans, and Canes Venatici I. For all three galaxies, we found that metal-poor and metal-rich groups of red-giant-branch stars have distinct spatial distributions, in which metal-rich stars are centrally concentrated while metal-poor stars are relatively dispersed. In Sextans, we found an off-centered peak of metal-poor stars which is presumed to be a disrupting star cluster in this galaxy. We will discuss the implications of our results for the dwarf galaxy formation and possible directions on future work of this project.

• Publications of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.30 no.2
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• pp.535-537
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• 2015

Interpreting ultraviolet-to-infrared (UV-to-IR) observations of galaxies in terms of constraints on physical parameters-such as stellar mass ($M_{\ast}$) and star formation rate (SFR)-requires spectral synthesis modelling. We investigate how increasing the level of sophistication of the standard simplifying assumptions of such models can improve estimates of galaxy physical parameters. To achieve this, we compile a sample of 1048 galaxies at redshifts 0.7 < z < 2.8 with accurate photometry at rest-frame UV to near-IR wavelengths from the 3D-HST Survey. We compare the spectral energy distributions of these galaxies with those from different model spectral libraries to derive estimates of the physical parameters. We find that spectral libraries including sophisticated descriptions of galaxy star formation histories (SFHs) and prescriptions for attenuation by dust and nebular emission provide a much better representation of the observations than 'classical' spectral libraries, in which galaxy SFHs are assumed to be exponentially declining functions of time, associated with a simple prescription for dust attenuation free of nebular emission. As a result, for the galaxies in our sample, $M_{\ast}$ derived using classical spectral libraries tends to be systematically overestimated and SFRs systematically underestimated relative to the values derived adopting a more realistic spectral library. We conclude that the sophisticated approach considered here is required to reliably interpret fundamental diagnostics of galaxy evolution.

• Publications of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.83-90
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• 2010

I briefly review what has been learned from determinations of mean stellar ages and abundances from integrated light studies of early-type galaxies, and discuss some new questions posed by recent data. A short discussion of spectroscopic ages is presented, but the main focus of this review is on the abundances of Fe, Mg, Ca, N, and C, obtained from comparisons of measurements taken in integrated spectra of galaxies with predictions from stellar population synthesis models.

• Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.30 no.1
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• pp.83-94
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• 1997

We have identified the candidates for the primordial galaxies in the process of formation in the Hubble Deep Field (hereafter HDF). In order to select these objects we have removed objects brighter than 29-th magnitude in the HDF images and smoothed the maps with the Gaussian filters with the FWHM of 0.8' and 4' to obtain the difference maps. This has enabled us to find. very faint diffuse structures close to the sky level. Peaks are identified in the difference map for each of three HDF chips with three filters (F450W, F606W, and F814W). They have the apparent AB magnitudes typically between 29 and 31. The objects identified in different wavelengths filters have a strong cross-correlations. The correlation lengths are about 0.8'. This means that an object found in one filter can be also found as a peak within 0.8' separation in another filter, thus telling the reality of the identified objects. This angular scale is also the size of the primordial galaxies which have strong color fluctuations on their surfaces. Their large-scale distribution quite resembles that of nearby galaxies, supporting the idea that these objects are ancestors of the present bright galaxies forming at statistically high density regions. Inspections on individual objects show that these primordial galaxy candidates have tiny multiple glares embedded in diffuse backgrounds. Their radial light distributions are quite different from that of nearby bright galaxies. We may be now looking at the epoch of galaxy formation.