• 천문학회지
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• 제32권1호
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• pp.7-16
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• 1999

Open clusters are useful tools to investigate the structure and evolution of the Galactic disk. We have started a long-term project to obtain UBVI CCD photometry of open clusters which were little studied before, using the Doyak 1.8 m telescope of Bohyunsan Optical Astronomy Observatory in Korea. The primary goals of this project are (1) to make a catalog of UBVI photometry of open clusters, (2) to make an atlas of open clusters, and (3) to survey and monitor variable stars in open clusters. Here we describe this project and report the first results based on preliminary analysis of the data on four open clusters in the survey sample: Be 14, Cr 74, Biu 9, and NGC 2355. Isochrone fitting of the color-magnitude diagrams of the clusters shows that all of them are intermediate age to old (0.3-1.6 Gyrs) open clusters with moderate metallicity.

• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• 제25권3호
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• pp.249-254
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• 2008

We report the distance modulus of nearby dwarf irregular galaxy NGC 6822 estimated from the so-called Tip of Red-giant Branch (TRGB) method. To detect the apparent magnitudes of the TRGB we use the color-magnitude diagrams (CMDs) and luminosity functions (LFs) in the near-infrared JHK bands. Foreground stars, main-sequence stars, and supergiant stars have been classified on the (g - K, g) plane and removed on the near-infrared CMDs, from which only RGB and AGB stars are remained on the CMDs and LFs. By applying the Savitzky-Golay filter to the obtained LFs and detecting the peak in the second derivative of the observed LFs, we determined the apparent magnitudes of the TRGB. Theoretical absolute magnitudes of the TRGB are estimated from Yonsei-Yale isochrones with the age of 12Gyr and the metallicity range of -2.0 <[Fe/H]< -0.5. The derived values of distance modulus to NGC 6822 are (m - M) = $23.35{\pm}0.26$, $23.20{\pm}0.42$, and $23.27{\pm}0.50$ for J, H, and K bands, respectively. Distance modulus in bolometric magnitude is also derived as (m - M) = $23.41{\pm}0.17$. We compare the derived values of the TRGB distance modulus to NGC 6822 in the near-infrared bands with the previous results in other bands.

• 천문학회보
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• 제38권2호
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• pp.76-76
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• 2013

The current hierarchical model of galaxy formation predicts that galaxy halos contain merger relics in the form of long stellar streams. In order to find stellar substructures in galaxy, we focused our investigation on the stellar spatial density around globular clusters and on the quantitative properties of the evolved sequences in the color-magnitude diagrams (CMDs). First, we investigated the spatial configuration of stars around five metal-poor globular clusters in halo region (M15, M30, M53, NGC 5053, and NGC 5466) and one metal-poor globular cluster in bulge region (NGC 6626). Our findings indicate that all of these globular clusters show strong evidence of extratidal features in the form of extended tidal tails around the clusters. The orientations of the extratidal features show the signatures of tidal tails tracing the clusters' orbits and the effects of dynamical interactions with the galaxy. These features were also confirmed by the radial surface density profiles and azimuthal number density profiles. Our results suggest that these six globular clusters are potentially associated with the satellite galaxies merged into the Milky Way. Second, we derived the morphological parameters of the red giant branch (RGB) from the near-infrared CMDs of 12 metal-poor globular clusters in the Galactic bulge. The photometric RGB shape indices such as colors at fixed magnitudes, magnitudes at fixed colors, and the RGB slope were measured for each cluster. The magnitudes of the RGB bump and tip were also estimated. The derived RGB parameters were used to examine the overall behavior of the RGB morphology as a function of cluster metallicity. The behavior of the RGB shape parameters was also compared with the previous observational calibration relation and theoretical predictions of the Yonsei-Yale isochrones. Our results of studies for stellar spatial distribution around globular clusters and the morphological properties of RGB stars in globular clusters could add further observational evidence of merging scenario of galaxy formation.

• 천문학회지
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• 제46권6호
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• pp.203-224
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• 2013

Wide-field $JHK_s$ images obtained with the SIRIUS near-infrared camera of the IRSF 1.4m telescope are used to examine the tidal structures of the spatial stellar configuration around six metal-poor ([Fe/H]< -1.0) globular clusters located within 3 kpc from the Galactic center. The radial surface density profiles are obtained from the surface photometry of the cluster images and the star counting for the photometric data. For the star counting, candidates of cluster member stars are selected with an filtering algorithm in color-magnitude diagrams. We find that the six target clusters show tidal overdensity features in the radial surface density profiles. There is a break inside the tidal radius for each cluster, and the profile in the outer overdensity region is characterized by a power law. Two-dimensional density maps of all the clusters show distorted asymmetric stellar configurations in the outer region. In five out of the six target clusters, the overdensity features are likely to be associated with the effects of the Galaxy dynamical interaction and the cluster space motions. The observed tidal configurations of stars suggest that several metal-poor clusters in the Galactic bulge are possibly surviving remnants of mergers to build the old stellar system of the Galactic bulge.

• 천문학회보
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• 제44권1호
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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.