• Publications of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.30 no.2
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• pp.741-743
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• 2015

We have designed and built three cost effective observatories, in distinct models, which can house Schmidt-Cassegrain type small telescopes having aperture sizes up to 16 inches. Using the available small telescopes, we provided the people of Manipura State in the far north-east corner of India the opportunity to observe directly with their own eyes the rare, spectacular events of the solar eclipse of January 15, 2010, lunar eclipse of December 10, 2011 and the transit of Venus of June 6, 2012. Apart from sharing a platform with the public for astronomy education and popularization through public outreach programs such as workshops, seminars and night watch programs, we have also developed a laboratory infrastructure and gained expertise in observational techniques based on photoelectric photometry, CCD imaging, CCD photometry and spectroscopy. Our team has become a partner in the ongoing international 'Orion project' headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona, USA which will be producing high quality photometric and spectroscopic data for five stars in the Orion constellation, namely Betelgeuse (alpha Orionis), Rigel (beta Orionis), Mintaka (delta Orionis), Alnilam (epsilon Orionis) and Alnitak (zeta Orionis). In the present paper, the authors would like to give a detailed report of their activities for the growth of astronomy in the state of Manipur, India.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.43 no.1
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• pp.66.2-66.2
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• 2018

The probability distribution function of column density (N-PDF) has been used for studying the characteristics of molecular clouds. In particular, the properties of N-PDF can reveal the nature of turbulence and gravity inside the molecular cloud. We use the dust continuum emission at $450{\mu}m$ and $850{\mu}m$ observed as part of the JCMT Gould Belt Survey (GBS) (Mairs et al. 2016), the 12CO J=1-0 line observed with the 45 m telescope at Nobeyama Radio Observatory (NRO) (Shimajiri et al. 2011), 13CO, C18O and HCO+ J=1-0 observed with the 13.7 m telescope at Taeduk Radio Astronomy Observatory (TRAO), as part of the TRAO key science project, "mapping Turbulent properties In star-forming MolEcular clouds down to the Sonic scale" (TIMES; PI: Jeong-Eun Lee). We here present the N-PDFs derived from the continuum and the molecular line emission toward the Orion A molecular cloud and compare their behaviors in order to investigate the chemical and optical depth effects on the N-PDF.