• Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.54 no.2
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• pp.71-88
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• 2021

We use N-body/hydrodynamic simulations to study the evolution of the spin of a Milky Way-like galaxy through interactions. We perform a controlled experiment of co-planar galaxy-galaxy encounters and study the evolution of disk spins of interacting galaxies. Specifically, we consider cases where the late-type target galaxy encounters an equally massive companion galaxy, which has either a late or an early-type morphology, with a closest approach distance of about 50 kpc, in prograde or retrograde sense. By examining the time change of the circular velocity of the disk material of the target galaxy from each case, we find that the target galaxy tends to lose the spin through prograde collisions but hardly through retrograde collisions, regardless of the companion galaxy type. The decrease of the spin results mainly from the deflection of the orbit of the disk material by tidal disruption. Although there is some disk material which gains the circular velocity through hydrodynamic as well as gravitational interactions or by transferring material from the companion galaxy, it turns out that the amount of the material is generally insufficient to increase the overall galactic spin under the conditions we set. We find that the spin angular momentum of the target galaxy disk decreases by 15-20% after a prograde collision. We conclude that the accumulated effects of galaxy-galaxy interactions will play an important role in determining the total angular momentum of late-type galaxies.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.46 no.1
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• pp.56.3-57
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• 2021

We use N-body/hydrodynamic simulations to study the evolution of the spin of a Milky Way-like galaxy through interactions. We perform a controlled experiment of co-planner galaxy-galaxy encounters and study the evolution of disk spins of interacting galaxies. Specifically, we consider the cases where the late-type target galaxy encounters an equally massive companion galaxy, which has either a late or an early-type morphology, with the closest approach distance of about 50 kpc, in prograde or retrograde sense. By examining the time change of the circular velocity of the disk material of the target galaxy from each case, we find that the target galaxy tends to lose the spin through prograde collisions but hardly through retrograde collisions, regardless of the companion galaxy type. The decrease of the spin results mainly from the deflection of the orbit of the disk material by tidal disruption. It is found that the spin angular momentum of the disk of the target galaxy decreases by 15 - 20% after a prograde collision. We conclude that the accumulated effects of galaxy-galaxy interactions will play an important role in determining the angular momentum of late-type galaxies at current stage.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.37 no.1
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• pp.32.1-32.1
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• 2012

Radial color gradient of disk galaxies has been a key tool for diagnosing the ages and metallicities of the stars and gas of these galaxies, and thus, the formation process of these disks. In many cases, observational data support the 'inside-out' picture of disk galaxy formation proposed by Larson (1976). In this scenario, gas within dark matter halos cools and accretes on to the outer disk while enhancing star formation in the disk. Recent discoveries of "extended ultra-viloet" (XUV) disks also show that majority of disk galaxy experience active star formation within out disks where gas surface density is quite low (Thilker et al. 2007; Gil de Paz et al. 2007). However, neither gas, nor stars stay put within galaxies. They rather migrate into bulges, disperse throughout galaxies, or flow into and out of galaxies via various mechanisms. There have been a few notable studies to investigate how radial star formation and metal abundance gradients vary across populations of disk galaxies systematically. However, the mechanisms driving gas transport are still poorly understood. Cross-matching various galaxy catalogs including KVAGC and UKIDSS, we are investigating if color gradients of late-type galaxies depend on their physical properties, especially on environmental properties. We will present the result from the pilot study on Karachentsev isolated galaxy catalog.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.43 no.2
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• pp.35.1-35.1
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• 2018

Bars are commonly found in disk galaxies. However, how bars form is yet unclear. There are two common pictures for the bar formation mechanism. Bars form through a physical process inherent in galaxies, or through and external process like galaxy-galaxy interaction. In this paper, we present the observational evidence that bars can form from another channel, namely a cluster-cluster interaction. We examined 105 galaxy clusters at 0.015

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.41 no.2
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• pp.61.3-62
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• 2016

NGC 4522 is a spiral galaxy located in the Virgo cluster which appears to be undergoing active ram pressure stripping due to the intracluster medium (ICM). What makes this galaxy special is the extraplanar CO gas, some of which coincides with the extraplanar $H{\alpha}$ patches. As one of the few cases where the interstellar molecular gas is thought to have been pushed out from the stellar disk by the ICM, this galaxy provides an opportunity to study the impact of ICM pressure on the dense/star forming gas and its fate in the extraplanar space after stripping. In order to probe detailed molecular gas properties inside and outside the stellar disk and the associated star formation activities, we have observed NGC 4522 in 12CO (1-0) and 13CO (1-0) using the ALMA. We have targeted two regions, one around the center of the galaxy and one centered on the peak of the extraplanar CO, detecting both lines in both regions. Particularly, this is the first case where 13CO gas has been detected outside the stellar disk in a galaxy undergoing ram pressure stripping. In this work, we present preliminary results from the ALMA observations and discuss the evolution of molecular gas properties and star formation activities inside and outside the stellar disk.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.45 no.1
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• pp.31.1-31.1
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• 2020

A merger or interaction between galaxy clusters is one of the most violent events in the universe. Thus, an interacting cluster is an optimum laboratory to understand how galaxy properties are influenced by a drastic change of the large-scale environment. Here, we present the observational evidence that bars in disk galaxies can form by cluster-cluster interaction and the bar formation is associated with star-formation enhancement. We investigated 105 galaxy clusters at 0.015

• 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.42 no.2
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• pp.46.2-46.2
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• 2017

We will present a discovery of an elliptical jellyfish galaxy in Abell 2670 (Sheen et al. 2017, ApJL, 840, L7). Our MUSE IFU spectra revealed a rotating gas disk in the center of the galaxy and long ionised gas tails emanating from the disk. Its one-sided tails and a tadpole-like morphology of star-forming blobs around the galaxy suggested that the galaxy is experiencing strong ram-pressure stripping in the cluster environment. Stellar kinematics with stellar absorption lines in the MUSE spectra demonstrated that the galaxy is an elliptical galaxy without any hint of a stellar disk. Then, the primary question would be the origin of the rich gas component in the elliptical galaxy. A plausible scenario is a wet merger with a gas-rich companion. In order to investigate star formation history of the system (the galaxy and star-forming blobs), we derived star-formation rate and metallicity from the MUSE spectra. Photometric UV-Optica-IR SED fitting was also performed using GALEX, SDSS, 2MASS and WISE data, to estimate dust and gas masses in the system. For a better understanding of star formation history and environmental effect of this galaxy, FIR/sub-mm follow-up observations are proposed.

• Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.30 no.1
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• pp.95-106
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• 1997

We investigate the velocity distribution of dark matter in the disk of a galaxy like the Milky Way at the solar radius. Using N-body simulations with the total mass and z-component of angular momentum conserved, we calculate the response of a dissipationless dark matter galactic halo during the dissipational collapse of the baryonic matter in spiral galaxy formation. The initial distribution of dark matter and baryonic particles is assumed to be a homogeneous mixture based on a King model. The baryonic matter is assumed to contract, forming the final luminous components of the galaxy, namely the disk and, in some cases, a bulge and central point. Both slow and fast growth of the luminous components are considered. We find that the velocity distribution of dark matter particles in a reference frame rotating slowly about the galaxy center in the plane of the disk is similar to a Maxwellian, but it is somewhat boxier, being flatter at the peak and truncated in the tails of the distribution. We tabulate parameters for the best-fitting Maxwellian and modified-Maxwellian distributions. There is no significant difference between slow collapse and fast collapse for all these results. We were unable to detect any effect of disk formation on the z-dependence of the dark matter density distribution.

• Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.25-53
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• 1991

The evolution of the Galaxy is examined by the halo-disk model, using the time-dependent bimodal IMF and contraints such as cumulative metallicity distribution, differential metallicity distribution and PDMF of main sequence stars. The time scale of the Galactic halo formation is about 3Gyr during which the most of halo stars and metal abundance are formed and ${\sim}95%$ of the initial halo mass falls to the disk. The G-dwarf problem could be explained by the time-dependent bimodal IMF which is suppressed for low mass stars at the early phase (t < 1Gyr) of the disk evolution. However, the importance of this problem is much weakened by the Pagel's differential metallicity distribution which leads to less initial metal enrichment and many long-lived metal-poor stars with Z < $1/3Z_{\odot}$ The observational distribution of abundance ratios of C, N, O elements with respect to [Fe/H] could be reproduced by the halo-disk model, including the contribution of iron product by SNIs of intermediate mass stars. The initial enrichment of elements in the disk could be explained by the halo-disk model, resulting in the slight decrease and then the increase in the slopes of the [N/Fe]- and [C/Fe]-distributions with increasing [Fe/H] in the range of [Fe/H] < -1.