• 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.1
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• pp.54.4-55
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• 2021

The Seoul National University AGN Monitoring Project (SAMP) is a welldesigned long-term AGN reverberation mapping project. SAMP focuses on the luminous AGNs out to z~0.5 with relative long time lags between AGN continuum and broad emission lines and aims to probe the high-end of the AGN broad line region (BLR) size-luminosity (R-L) relation. The pilot observations started in October 2015 for 100 AGNs to confirm the variability and the H and [O III] emission line strengths. Based on the initial variability test, 48 quasars has been continued spectroscopic monitoring since Feb. 2016 with Lick 3m and MDM 2.4m telescopes with a cadence of ~20 days. Supporting photometric monitoring in B and V band was conducted at multiple facilities including the MDM 1.3m, LOAO, and DOAO telescopes with a cadence of ~10 days. By the time of Feb. 2021, we have obtained five years spectroscopic and photometric data. More than 30 AGNs shows significant variability in five-year baseline and 16 of them show well detected lags between B-band and H. Here, we report some examples of SAMP light curves and lag detections using the first five-year data as well as the location of our 16 targets in the AGN BLR R-L relation. These measurements are consistent with the existing R-L relation and located at the high-end. With the coming data, SAMP are hopefully to report more AGNs with well detected lags. Our results demonstrate the general feasibility and potential of long-term reverberation project with medium cadence for luminous AGNs.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.46 no.2
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• pp.38.1-38.1
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• 2021

Dust polarization depends on the physical and mechanical properties of dust, as well as the properties of local environments. To understand how dust polarization varies with grain mechanical properties and the local environment, in this paper, we model the wavelength-dependence polarization of starlight and polarized dust emission by aligned grains by simultaneously taking into account grain alignment and rotational disruption by radiative torques (RATs). We explore a wide range of the local radiation field and grain mechanical properties characterized by tensile strength. We find that the maximum polarization and the peak wavelength shift to shorter wavelengths as the radiation strength U increases due to the enhanced alignment of small grains. Grain rotational disruption by RATs tends to decrease the optical-near infrared polarization but increases the ultraviolet polarization of starlight due to the conversion of large grains into smaller ones. In particular, we find that the submillimeter (submm) polarization degree at 850㎛(P850) does not increase monotonically with the radiation strength or grain temperature (Td), but it depends on the tensile strength of grain materials. Our physical model of dust polarization can be tested with observations toward star-forming regions or molecular clouds irradiated by a nearby star, which have higher radiation intensity than the average interstellar radiation field. Finally, we compare our predictions of the P850-Td relationship with Planck data and find that the observed decrease of P850 with Td can be explained when grain disruption by RATs is accounted for, suggesting that interstellar grains unlikely to have a compact structure but perhaps a composite one. The variation of the submm polarization with U (or Td)can provide a valuable constraint on the internal structures of cosmic dust

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.46 no.1
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• pp.50.2-51
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• 2021

Stars form exclusively in cold and dense molecular clouds. To fully understand star formation processes, it is hence a key to investigate how molecular clouds form out of the surrounding diffuse atomic gas. With an aim of shedding light in the process of the atomic-to-molecular transition in the interstellar medium, we analyze Arecibo HI emission and absorption spectral pairs along with TRAO/PMO 12CO(1-0) emission spectra toward 58 lines of sight probing in and around molecular clouds in the solar neighborhood, i.e., Perseus, Taurus, and California. 12CO(1-0) is detected from 19 out of 58 lines of sight, and we report the physical properties of HI (e.g., central velocity, spin temperature, and column density) in the vicinity of CO. Our preliminary results show that the velocity difference between the cold HI (Cold Neutral Medium or CNM) and CO (median ~ 0.7 km/s) is on average more than a factor of two smaller than the velocity difference between the warm HI (Warm Neutral Medium or WNM) and CO (median ~ 1.7 km/s). In addition, we find that the CNM tends to become colder (median spin temperature ~ 43 K) and abundant (median CNM fraction ~ 0.55) as it gets closer to CO. These results hints at the evolution of the CNM in the vicinity of CO, implying a close association between the CNM and molecular gas. Finally, in order to examine the role of HI in the formation of molecular gas, we compare the observed CNM properties to the theoretical model by Bialy & Sternberg (2016), where the HI column density for the HI-to-H2 transition point is predicted as a function of density, metallicity, and UV radiation field. Our comparison shows that while the model reproduces the observations reasonably well on average, the observed CNM components with high column densities are much denser than the model prediction. Several sources of this discrepancy, e.g., missing physical and chemical ingredients in the model such as the multi-phase ISM, non-equilibrium chemistry, and turbulence, will be discussed.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.46 no.1
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• pp.43.1-43.1
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• 2021

In this study, we suggest a new method to estimate the mass of a halo coronal mass ejection (CME) using synthetic CMEs. For this, we generate synthetic CMEs based on two assumptions: (1) the CME structure is a full ice-cream cone, (2) the CME electron density follows a power-law distribution (ρ_cme=ρ₀r^-n). The power-law exponent n is obtained by minimizing the root mean square error between the electron number density distributions of an observed CME and the corresponding synthetic CME at a position angle of the CME leading edge. By applying this methodology to 57 halo CMEs, we estimate two kinds of synthetic CME mass. One is a synthetic CME mass which considers only the observed CME region (M_cme1), the other is a synthetic CME mass which includes both the observed CME region and the occulted area larger than 4 solar radii (M_cme2). From these two cases, we derive conversion factors which are the ratio of a synthetic CME mass to an observed CME mass. The conversion factor for M_cme1 ranges from 1.4 to 3.0 and its average is 2.0. For M_cme2, the factor ranges from 1.8 to 5.0 with the average of 3.0. These results imply that the observed halo CME mass can be underestimated by about 2 times when we consider the observed CME region, and about 3 times when we consider the region including the occulted area. Interestingly these conversion factors have a very strong negative correlation with angular widths of halo CMEs.We also compare the results with the CME mass estimated from STEREO observations.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.46 no.2
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• pp.75.2-76
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• 2021

MESSIER is a science satellite project to observe the Low Surface Brightness (LSB) sky at UV and optical wavelengths. The wide-field, optical system of MESSIER is optimized minimizing optical aberrations through the use of a Linear Astigmatism Free - Three Mirror System (LAF-TMS) combined with freeform mirrors. One of the key factors in observations of the LSB is the shape and spatial variability of the Point Spread Function (PSF) produced by scatterings and diffraction effects within the optical system and beyond (baffle). To assess the various factors affecting the PSF in this design, we use PhoSim, the Photon simulator, which is a fast photon Monte Carlo code designed to include all these effects, and also atmospheric effects (for ground-based telescopes) and phenomena occurring inside of the sensor. PhoSim provides very realistic simulations results and is suitable for simulations of very weak signals. Before the application to the MESSIER optics system, PhoSim had not been validated for confocal off-axis reflective optics (LAF-TMS). As a verification study for the LAF-TMS design, we apply Phosim sequentially. First, we use a single parabolic mirror system and compare the PSF results of the central field with the results from Zemax, CODE V, and the theoretical Airy pattern. We then test a confocal off-axis Cassegrain system and check PhoSim through cross-validation with CODE V. At the same time, we describe the shapes of the freeform mirrors with XY and Zernike polynomials. Finally, we will analyze the LAF-TMS design for the MESSIER optical system.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.46 no.2
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• pp.70.2-71
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• 2021

We examine gas kinematics and star formation activities of NGC 6822, a gas-rich dwarf irregular galaxy in the Local Group at a distance of ~490 kpc. We perform profile decomposition of all the line-of-sight (LOS) HI velocity profiles of the high-resolution (42.4" × 12" spatial; 1.6 km/s spectral) HI data cube of the galaxy, taken with the Australian Telescope Compact Array (ATCA). To this end, we use a novel tool based on Bayesian Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) techniques, the so-called BAYGAUD, which allows us to decompose a velocity profile into an optimal number of Gaussian components in a quantitative manner. We group all the decomposed components into bulk-narrow, bulk-broad, and non-bulk gas components classified with respect to their velocity dispersions and the amounts of velocity offset from the global kinematics, respectively. Using the surface densities and velocity dispersions of the kinematically decomposed HI gas maps together with the rotation curve of NGC 6822, we derive Toomre-Q parameters for individual regions of the galaxy which quantify the level of local gravitational instability of the gaseous disk. We also measure the local star formation rate (SFR) of the corresponding regions in the galaxy by combining GALEX Far-ultraviolet (FUV) and WISE 22㎛ images. We then relate the gas and SFR surface densities in order to investigate the local Kennicutt-Schmidt (K-S) law of gravitationally unstable regions which are selected from the Toomre Q analysis. Of the three groups, the bulk-narrow, bulk-broad and non-bulk gas components, we find that the lower Toomre-Q values the bulk-narrow gas components have, the more consistent with the linear extension of the K-S law derived from molecular hydrogen (H2) observations.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.46 no.2
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• pp.46.3-47
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• 2021

Recently a multilayer spectral inversion (MLSI) model has been proposed to infer the physical parameters of plasmas in the solar chromosphere. The inversion solves a three-layer radiative transfer model using the strong absorption line profiles, H alpha and Ca II 8542 Å, taken by the Fast Imaging Solar Spectrograph (FISS). The model successfully provides the physical plasma parameters, such as source functions, Doppler velocities, and Doppler widths in the layers of the photosphere to the chromosphere. However, it is quite expensive to apply the MLSI to a huge number of line profiles. For example, the calculating time is an hour to several hours depending on the size of the scan raster. We apply deep neural network (DNN) to the inversion code to reduce the cost of calculating the physical parameters. We train the models using pairs of absorption line profiles from FISS and their 13 physical parameters (source functions, Doppler velocities, Doppler widths in the chromosphere, and the pre-determined parameters for the photosphere) calculated from the spectral inversion code for 49 scan rasters (~2,000,000 dataset) including quiet and active regions. We use fully connected dense layers for training the model. In addition, we utilize a skip connection to avoid a problem of vanishing gradients. We evaluate the model by comparing the pairs of absorption line profiles and their inverted physical parameters from other quiet and active regions. Our result shows that the deep learning model successfully reproduces physical parameter maps of a scan raster observation per second within 15% of mean absolute percentage error and the mean squared error of 0.3 to 0.003 depending on the parameters. Taking this advantage of high performance of the deep learning model, we plan to provide the physical parameter maps from the FISS observations to understand the chromospheric plasma conditions in various solar features.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.46 no.2
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• pp.40.3-41
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• 2021

Minor mergers leave behind long lived, but extremely faint and extended tidal features including tails, streams, loops and plumes. These act as a fossil record for the host galaxy's past interactions, allowing us to infer recent accretion histories and place constraints on the properties and nature of a galaxy's dark matter halo. However, shallow imaging or small homogeneous samples of past surveys have resulted in weak observational constraints on the role of galaxy mergers and interactions in galaxy assembly. The Rubin Observatory, which is optimised to deliver fast, wide field-of-view imaging, will enable deep and unbiased observations over the 18,000 square degrees of the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST), resulting in samples of potentially of millions of objects undergoing tidal interactions. Using realistic mock images produced with state-of-the-art cosmological simulations we perform a comprehensive theoretical investigation of the extended diffuse light around galaxies and galaxy groups down to low stellar mass densities. We consider the nature, frequency and visibility of tidal features and debris across a range of environments and stellar masses as well as their reliability as an indicator of galaxy accretion histories. We consider how observational biases such as projection effects, the point-spread-function and survey depth may effect the proper characterisation and measurement of tidal features, finding that LSST will be capable of recovering much of the flux found in the outskirts of L* galaxies at redshifts beyond local volume. In our simulated sample, tidal features are ubiquitous In L* galaxies and remain common even at significantly lower masses (M*>10^10 Msun). The fraction of stellar mass found in tidal features increases towards higher masses, rising to 5-10% for the most massive objects in our sample (M*~10^11.5 Msun). Such objects frequently exhibit many distinct tidal features often with complex morphologies, becoming increasingly numerous with increased depth. The interpretation and characterisation of such features can vary significantly with orientation and imaging depth. Our findings demonstrate the importance of accounting for the biases that arise from projection effects and surface-brightness limits and suggest that, even after the LSST is complete, much of the discovery space in low surface-brightness Universe will remain to be explored.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.44 no.2
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• pp.64.1-64.1
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• 2019

The first high-resolution spectroscopic and new multiband photometric observations of the semi-detached Algol type binary XZ CMi were performed at the Bohyunsan Optical Astronomy Observatory (BOAO) and the Sobaeksan Optical Astronomy Observatory (SOAO), respectively. A total of 34 spectra were obtained using the 1.8 m reflector of the BOAO equipped with the Bohyunsan Optical Echelle Spectrograph to construct the radial velocity (RV) curves of the eclipsing pair. New BVRI photometric light curves were also covered by using the SOAO 61cm reflector and a CCD camera. A detailed analysis of all eclipse timings shows that the orbital period of XZ CMi has varied in an upward parabolic variation superposed on a sinusoidal oscillation with a period of 38.0 yr and a semi-amplitude of 0.0071 days. From the spectral analysis, the effective temperature and the projected rotational velocity of the primary component were determined to be T_eff,1 = 7387±161 K and v₁sini = 122±6 km s^-1, respectively. Our simultaneous synthesis of the double-lined RV and BVRI light curves gives the reliable system parameters of XZ CMi with a mass ratio (q) of 0.314, an orbital inclination (i) of 81.9 deg and a large temperature difference (∆T) of 2481 K. The individual masses and radii of both components are M₁ = 1.91±0.08M_⊙, M₂ = 0.60±0.02M_⊙, R₁ = 1.60±0.02R_⊙, R₂ = 1.13±0.02R_⊙, respectively. Although the primary component is located inside the δ Sct and γ Dor instability strips, no evidence of pulsation in the system was detected. The possible evolutionary status of XZ CMi is discussed.