• Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
• /
• v.29 no.spc1
• /
• pp.49-51
• /
• 1996

New population synthesis models, with the effects of metallicity spread and the horizontal-branch (HB) morphology, provide a way to break the well-known age-metallicity degeneracy in the analysis of the integrated light of elliptical galaxies. Our models suggest that the far- UV radiation of these systems is dominated by a minority population of metal-poor, hot HB stars and their post-HB progeny, while the optical radiation is dominated by a metal-rich population. The systematic variation of UV upturn depends on the contribution from metal-poor, hot HB stars and their post-HB progeny, which in turn depends on the ages of old stellar populations in galaxies. Our result implies a prolonged epoch of galaxy formation, in the sense that more massive galaxies (in denser environments) formed first. Our models also suggest that the strenghth of H$\beta$ index is strongly affected by HB stars, and hence previous age estimation without detailed modeling of the HB would underestimate the ages of ellipticals by $\~$7 Gyr.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
• /
• v.36 no.1
• /
• pp.59.2-59.2
• /
• 2011

Constraining physical (or stellar population) properties - such as stellar mass, star-formation rate, stellar population age, and dust-extinction - of galaxies from observation is crucial in the study of galaxy evolution. This is very challenging especially for high-redshift galaxies, and a widely-used method to estimate physical properties of high-redshift galaxies is to compare their photometric spectral energy distributions (SEDs) to spectral templates from stellar population synthesis models. I will show that the SED-fitting results of high-redshift galaxies are strongly dependent on the assumed forms of star-formation histories. I will also present the results of SED-fitting analysis of observed Lyman-break galaxies which show that parametric models with gradually increasing star-formation histories provide better estimates of physical parameters of high-redshift (z>3) star-forming galaxies than traditionally-used exponentially declining star-formation histories. This result is also consistent with the predictions from the modern galaxy formation models.

• Publications of The Korean Astronomical Society
• /
• v.32 no.1
• /
• pp.205-208
• /
• 2017

Modelling and fitting the spectral energy distribution (SED) of galaxies or regions of galaxies is one of the most useful methods available to the astronomer nowadays. By modelling the SEDs and comparing the models to the observations, we can collect important information on the physical processes at play in the formation and evolution of galaxies. The models allow to follow the evolution of the galaxies from their formation on. The versatility of code is crucial because of the diversity of galaxies. The analysis is only relevant and useful if the models can correctly reproduce this diversity now and across (as best as possible) all redshifts. On the other hand, the code needs to run fast to compare several million or tens of millions of models and to select the best (on a probabilistic basis) one that best resembles the observations. With this important point in mind, it seems logical that we should efficiently make use of the computer power available to the average astronomer. For instance, it seems difficult, today, to model and fit SEDs without a parallelized code. We present the new Python version of CIGALE SED fitting code and its characteristics. CIGALE comes in two main flavours: CIGALE Classic to fit SEDs and CIGALE Model to create spectra and SEDs of galaxies at all redshifts. The latest can potentially be used in conjunction with galaxy evolution models of galaxy formation and evolution such as semi-analytic ones.

• Bulletin of the Korean Space Science Society
• /
• 2009.10a
• /
• pp.34.3-34.3
• /
• 2009

We have investigated the recent star formation history of the nearby galaxies using the SDSS optical and Galex UV data. To everyone's surprise, we found that roughly 30 percent of elliptical galaxies had a residual star formation in the last billion years, suggesting that residual star formation has been common even in ellipticals. Galaxy evolution models based on semi-analytic prescriptions including AGN feedback reasonably reproduce the star formation properties of elliptical galaxies. However, we found that the current galaxy models miserably fail to reproduce the star formation properties of satellite disc galaxies in cluster environments. Satellite disc galaxies in models are overly star-formation quenched in comparison to observation. Detailed investigations led us to conclude that this is due to the use of inaccurate prescriptions for the gas content evolution in the model. I present a solution to the problem by adopting more realistic physical prescriptions.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
• /
• v.41 no.2
• /
• pp.63.2-63.2
• /
• 2016

One of the well-known problems in the lambda cold dark matter (${\Lambda}CDM$) models is a missing satellite problem. The slope of the mass function of low mass galaxies predicted by ${\Lambda}CDM$ models is much steeper than that based on the luminosity function of dwarf galaxies in the local universe. This implies that the model prediction is an overestimate of low mass galaxies, or that the current census of dwarf galaxies in the local universe may be an underestimate of dwarf galaxies. Previous studies of galaxy luminosity functions to address this problem are based mostly on the sample of galaxies brighter than Mv ~ -10 in the nearby galaxies. In this study we try to search for ultra-faint galaxies (UFDs), which are much fainter than those in the previous studies. We use multi-field HST ACS images of M60 in the archive. M60 is a giant elliptical galaxy located in the east part of the Virgo cluster, and hosts a large population of globular clusters and UCDs. Little is known about the dwarf galaxies in this galaxy. UFDs are much fainter, much smaller, and have lower surface brightness than normal dwarf galaxies so HST images of massive galaxies are an ideal resource. We present preliminary results of this search.

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

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

• Bulletin of the Korean Space Science Society
• /
• 2003.10a
• /
• pp.78-78
• /
• 2003

Dwarf galaxies are the most common type of galaxy in the universe and believed to be basic building blocks of the large scale structures. In order to understand the formation history of these galaxies, we selected two well-observed galaxies in the Local Group and constructed the stellar population models including HB stars. We employed Y$^2$ Isochrones (Yi et al. 2001) and HB tracks (Yi et al. 1997) for stellar population synthesis. Our models show that (1) the Carina dSph has several distinct populations with age of ∼10.5, 5.8, 4.1, 2.8 and 1.0 Gyrs, and (2) stellar populations of the Sextans dSph are constructed in terms of the two populations with age of ∼ 11 and ∼2.5 Gyrs. Observational data were kindly provided by Lee et al. (2003, in preparation) and Monelli et al. (2003) for Sextans and Carina dsphs, respectively.

• Publications of The Korean Astronomical Society
• /
• v.30 no.2
• /
• pp.473-474
• /
• 2015

Halo merger trees are the essential backbone of semi-analytic models for galaxy formation and evolution. Srisawat et al. (2013) show that different tree building algorithms can build different halo merger histories from a numerical simulation for structure formation. In order to understand the differences induced by various tree building algorithms, we investigate the impact of halo merger trees on a semi-analytic model. We find that galaxy properties in our models show differences between trees when using a common parameter set. The models independently calibrated for each tree can reduce the discrepancies between global galaxy properties at z=0. Conversely, with regard to the evolutionary features of galaxies, the calibration slightly increases the differences between trees. Therefore, halo merger trees extracted from a common numerical simulation using different, but reliable, algorithms can result in different galaxy properties in the semi-analytic model. Considering the uncertainties in baryonic physics governing galaxy formation and evolution, however, these differences may not necessarily be significant.

• Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
• /
• v.27 no.2
• /
• pp.177-190
• /
• 1994

We have examined the photometric evolution of elliptical galaxies, using stellar evolutionary models covering the wide ranges of metallicity and mass, and the different IMFs (simple IMP & time-dependent bimodal IMF). The model with a time-dependent bimodal IMF can reproduce the observed integrated magnitudes and colors at all wavelengths. The computed model shows that the star formation in elliptical galaxies is still going on, although the number of newly born stars is very small. The chemical evolutionary effect is clearly seen in the C-M diagram of computed elliptical galaxies.