• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.39 no.1
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• pp.51.1-51.1
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• 2014

DOTIFS is a new multi-object Integral Field Spectrograph (IFS) being designed and fabricated by the Inter-University Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Pune, India, (IUCAA) for the Cassegrain side port of the 3.6m Devasthal Optical Telescope (DOT). The telescope is constructed by the Aryabhatta Research Institute of Observational Sciences, Nainital (ARIES). Its main scientific objectives are the physics and kinematics of the ionized gas, star formation and H II regions in nearby galaxies. It is a novel instrument in terms of multi-IFU, built in deployment system, and high throughput. It consists of one magnifier, 16 integral field units (IFUs), and 8 spectrographs. Each IFU is comprised of a microlens array and 144 optical fibers, and has $7.4^{\prime\prime}{\times}8.7^{\prime\prime}$ field of view with 144 spaxel elements with a sampling of 0.8" hexagonal aperture. The IFUs can be deployed on the telescope side port over an 8' diameter focal plane by x-y actuators. 8 Identical, all refractive, dedicated fiber spectrographs will produce 2,304 R~1800 spectra over 370-740nm wavelength range with single exposure. Currently, conceptual and baseline design review had been done, and is in the critical design phase with a review planned for later this year. Some of the components have already arrived. The instrument will see its first light in 2015.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.39 no.1
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• pp.41.1-41.1
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• 2014

Although the link between activity in the nuclei of galaxy and galactic mergers has been under scrutiny for several years, it is still unclear to what extent and for which populations of active galaxies merger-triggered activity is relevant. The environment of AGN allows an indirect probe of the past merger history and future merger probability of these systems, suffering less from sensitivity issues while extending to higher redshifts, compared to traditional morphological studies of AGN host galaxies. Here we present results from our investigation of the environment of radio selected sources out to redshift z=2. We employ the first data release J-band catalog from the new near-IR Infrared Medium-Deep Survey (IMS) and 1.4 GHz radio data from the Faint Images of the Radio Sky at Twenty-cm (FIRST) survey and a deep dedicated VLA survey of the VIMOS field, covering a combined total of ~20 sq. degrees. Given the flux limit of the combined radio catalog (0.1 mJy), we probe a radio luminosity range of 10^36-10^44 erg/s. Using the second and fifth closest neighbor density parameters, we test whether active galaxies inhabit denser environments and study these overdensities in terms of both distance to the AGN and its luminosity. We find evidence for a sub-population of radio-selected AGN that resides in significantly overdense environments at small scales, although we do not find significant overdensities for the bulk of our sample. We do not recover any dependence between the AGN radio-luminosity and overdensities. We show that radio-AGN inhabiting the most underdense environments in the field have vigorous ongoing star formation. We interpret these results in terms of the triggering and fuelling mechanism of radio-AGN.

• Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.50 no.1
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• pp.7-20
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• 2017

We carry out the study of $850{\mu}m$ sources in a part of the XMM-LSS field. The $850{\mu}m$ imaging data were obtained by the SCUBA-2 on the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT) for three days in July 2015 with an integration time of 6.1 hours, covering a circular area with a radius of 15'. We choose the central area up to a radius of 9'.15 for the study, where the noise distribution is relatively uniform. The root mean square (rms) noise at the center is 2.7 mJy. We identify 17 sources with S/N > 3.5. Differential number count is estimated in flux range between 3.5 and 9.0 mJy after applying various corrections derived by imaging simulations, which is consistent with previous studies. For detailed study on the individual sources, we select three sources with more reliable measurements (S/N > 4.5), and construct their spectral energy distributions (SEDs) from optical to far-infrared band. Redshift distribution of the sources ranges from 0.36 to 3.28, and their physical parameters are extracted using MAGPHYS model, which yield infrared luminosity $L_{IR}=10^{11.3}-10^{13.4}L_{\odot}$, star formation rate $SFR=10^{1.3}-10^{3.2}M_{\odot}yr^{-1}$ and dust temperature $T_D=30-53K$. We investigate the correlation between $L_{IR}$ and $T_D$, which appears to be consistent with previous studies.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.44 no.1
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• pp.38.2-38.2
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• 2019

S0 galaxies are mostly known to be formed in dense environments from spiral progenitors. Recently, however, a new formation scenario has been suggested that field S0s can be formed from elliptical progenitors. The Sombrero galaxy (M104, NGC 4594) is a massive disk galaxy located in the field environment, and its morphological type has been controversial from Sa to E. Thus, it is an ideal target to test the new scenario. We trace the giant halo of M104 with globular clusters to test this scenario. From the wide images obtained with CFHT/MegaCam, we find a large number of globular clusters in this galaxy. We also confirm their membership by measuring the radial velocities from the spectra obtained with MMT/Hectospec. The color distribution of these globular clusters is bimodal, and blue (metal-poor) globular clusters are more spatially widely spread than red (metal-rich) globular clusters. This indicates that M104 hosts a giant metal-poor halo as well as an inner metal-rich halo. Combining this result with the fact that M104 is unusually massive and brighter than other spiral galaxies, we infer that M104 was indeed a massive elliptical galaxy that had formed a metal-rich halo by gas-rich mergers and a metal-poor halo by gas-poor mergers. In addition, we find young star clusters around the disk of M104, which shows that the disk formed after the spheroidal halos had formed. In conclusion, we suggest that M104 was originally a massive elliptical galaxy and was transformed to a lenticular galaxy by acquiring its disk later.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.43 no.2
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• pp.52.3-53
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• 2018

We compare vertical profiles of the extraplanar $H{\alpha}$ emission to those of the UV emission for 38 nearby edge-on late-type galaxies. It is found that detection of the "diffuse" extraplanar dust (eDust), traced by the vertically extended, scattered UV starlight, always coincides with the presence of the extraplanar $H{\alpha}$ emission. A strong correlation between the scale heights of the extraplanar $H{\alpha}$ and UV emissions is also found; the scale height at $H{\alpha}$ is found to be ~0.74 of the scale height at FUV. Our results may indicate the multiphase nature of the diffuse ionized gas and dust in the galactic halos. The existence of eDust in galaxies where the extraplanar $H{\alpha}$ emission is detected suggests that a larger portion of the extraplanar $H{\alpha}$ emission than that predicted in previous studies may be caused by $H{\alpha}$ photons that originate from H II regions in the galactic plane and are subsequently scattered by the eDust. This possibility raise an advantage in studying the extraplanar diffuse ionized gas. We also find that the scale heights of the extraplanar emissions normalized to the galaxy size correlate well with the star formation rate surface density of the galaxies. The properties of eDust in our galaxies is on a continuation line of that found through previous observations of the extraplanar polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons emission in more active galaxies known to have galactic winds.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.44 no.1
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• pp.38.4-38.4
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• 2019

Ultra-diffuse galaxies (UDGs) are intriguing in the sense that they are much larger than dwarf galaxies but have much lower surface brightness than normal galaxies. To date, UDGs have been found only in the local universe. Taking advantage of deep and high-resolution HST images, we search for UDGs in massive galaxy clusters in the distant universe. In this work, we present our search results of UDGs in three massive clusters of the Hubble Frontier Fields: Abell 2744 (z=0.308), Abell S1063 (z=0.348), and Abell 370 (z=0.375). These clusters are the most distant and massive among the host systems of known UDGs. The color-magnitude diagrams of these clusters show that UDGs are mainly located in the faint end of the red sequence. This means that most UDGs in these clusters consist of old stars. Interestingly, we found a few blue UDGs, which implies that they had recent star formation. The radial number densities of UDGs clearly decrease in the central region of the clusters in contrast to those of bright galaxies which keep rising. This implies that a large fraction of UDGs in the central region were tidally disrupted. These features are consistent with those of UDGs in nearby galaxy clusters. We estimate the total number of UDGs (N(UDG)) in each cluster. The abundance of UDGs shows a tight relation with the virial masses (M_200) of thier host systems: M_200 \propto N(UDG)^(1.01+/-0.05). This slope is found to be very close to one, indicating that efficiency of UDGs does not significantly depend on the host environments. Furthermore, estimation of dynamical masses of UDGs indicates that most UDGs have dwarf-like masses (M_200 < 10^11 M_Sun), but a few UDGs have $L{\ast}$-like masses (M_200 > 10^11 M_Sun). In summary, UDGs in distant massive clusters are found to be similar to those in the local universe.

• Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.55 no.5
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• pp.149-172
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• 2022

We present a new method which constructs an Hɪ super-profile of a galaxy which is based on profile decomposition analysis. The decomposed velocity profiles of an Hɪ data cube with an optimal number of Gaussian components are co-added after being aligned in velocity with respect to their centroid velocities. This is compared to the previous approach where no prior profile decomposition is made for the velocity profiles being stacked. The S/N improved super-profile is useful for deriving the galaxy's global Hɪ properties like velocity dispersion and mass from observations which do not provide sufficient surface brightness sensitivity for the galaxy. As a practical test, we apply our new method to 64 high-resolution Hɪ data cubes of nearby galaxies in the local Universe which are taken from THINGS and LITTLE THINGS. In addition, we also construct two additional Hɪ super-profiles of the sample galaxies using symmetric and all velocity profiles of the cubes whose centroid velocities are determined from Hermite h3 polynomial fitting, respectively. We find that the Hɪ super-profiles constructed using the new method have narrower cores and broader wings in shape than the other two super-profiles. This is mainly due to the effect of either asymmetric velocity profiles' central velocity bias or the removal of asymmetric velocity profiles in the previous methods on the resulting Hɪ super-profiles. We discuss how the shapes (𝜎_n/𝜎_b, A_n/A_b, and A_n/A_tot) of the new Hɪ super-profiles which are measured from a double Gaussian fit are correlated with star formation rates of the sample galaxies and are compared with those of the other two super-profiles.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.46 no.2
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• pp.66.3-67
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• 2021

Low-mass stars form by the gravitational collapse of dense molecular cores. Observations and theories of low-mass protostars both suggest that accretion bursts happen in timescales of ~100 years with high accretion rates, so called episodic accretion. One mechanism that triggers accretion bursts is infalling fragments from the outer disk. Such fragmentation happens when the disk is massive enough, preferentially activated during the embedded phase of star formation (Class 0 and I). Most observations and models focus on the gas structure of the protostars undergoing episodic accretion. However, the dust and ice composition are poorly understood, but crucial to the chemical evolution through thermal and energetic processing via accretion burst. During the burst phase, the surrounding material is heated up, and the chemical compositions of gas and ice in the disk and envelope are altered by sublimation of icy molecules from grain surfaces. Such alterations leave imprints in the ice composition even when the temperature returns to the pre-burst level. Thus, chemical compositions of gas and ice retain the history of past bursts. Infrared spectral observations of the Spitzer and AKARI revealed a signature caused by substantial heating, toward many embedded protostars at the quiescent phase. We present the AKARI IRC 2.5-5.0 ㎛ spectra for embedded protostars to trace down the characteristics of accretion burst across the evolutionary stages. The ice compositions obtained from the absorption features therein are used as a clock to measure the timescale after the burst event, comparing the analyses of the gas component that traced the burst frequency using the different refreeze-out timescales. We discuss ice abundances, whose chemical change has been carved in the icy mantle, during the different timescales after the burst ends.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.44 no.2
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• pp.37.3-37.3
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• 2019

We study the stellar populations of the brightest group galaxies (BGGs) in groups whose halos have different dynamical states, using observational data from the GAMA survey. The two independent indicators to probe the dynamical state of the halo are the magnitude gap between two most luminous galaxies (∆M12) and offset between BGG and the luminosity center (Doffset) of the group. Such indicators complement each other in identifying relaxed and unrelaxed galaxy groups in our samples. We find that the BGGs of unrelaxed groups have significantly bluer NUV-r colours than in relaxed groups. This is also true at fixed sersic index. We find the bluer colours cannot be explained away by differing dust fraction, suggesting there are real differences in their stellar populations. SFRs derived from SED-fitting tend to be higher in unrelaxed systems. This could be partly because there is a greater fraction of BGGs with non-elliptical morphology, but also because unrelaxed systems are expected to have larger numbers of mergers, some of which may bring fuel for star formation. The SED-fitted stellar metallicities of BGGs in unrelaxed systems also tend to be higher, perhaps because the building blocks of the unrelaxed systems were more massive and had more time to enrich themselves. We find that the ∆M12 parameter is the most important parameter behind the observed differences in the relaxed/unrelaxed groups. We also find that groups selected to be unrelaxed using our criteria tend to have higher velocity offsets between the BGG and their group.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.44 no.2
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• pp.55.3-55.3
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• 2019

We present a pipeline to estimate baryonic properties of a galaxy inside a dark matter (DM) halo in DM-only simulations using a machine trained on high-resolution hydrodynamic simulations. As an example, we use the IllustrisTNG hydrodynamic simulation of a (75 h^-1 Mpc)³ volume to train our machine to predict e.g., stellar mass and star formation rate in a galaxy-sized halo based purely on its DM content. An extremely randomized tree (ERT) algorithm is used together with multiple novel improvements we introduce here such as a refined error function in machine training and two-stage learning. Aided by these improvements, our model demonstrates a significantly increased accuracy in predicting baryonic properties compared to prior attempts --- in other words, the machine better mimics IllustrisTNG's galaxy-halo correlation. By applying our machine to the MultiDark-Planck DM-only simulation of a large (1 h^-1 Gpc)³ volume, we then validate the pipeline that rapidly generates a galaxy catalogue from a DM halo catalogue using the correlations the machine found in IllustrisTNG. We also compare our galaxy catalogue with the ones produced by popular semi-analytic models (SAMs). Our so-called machine-assisted semi-simulation model (MSSM) is shown to be largely compatible with SAMs, and may become a promising method to transplant the baryon physics of galaxy-scale hydrodynamic calculations onto a larger-volume DM-only run. We discuss the benefits that machine-based approaches like this entail, as well as suggestions to raise the scientific potential of such approaches.