• Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.38 no.2
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• pp.59-66
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• 2005

A new ion transport code for planetary ionospheric studies has been developed with consideration of velocity differences among ion species involving ion-ion collision. Most of previous planetary ionosphere models assumed that ions diffuse through non-moving ion and neutral background in order to consolidate continuity and momentum equations for ions into a simple set of diffusion equations. The simplification may result in unreliable density profiles of ions at high altitudes where ion velocities are fast and their velocity differences are significant enough to cause inaccuracy when computing ion-ion collision. A new code solves explicitly one-dimensional continuity and momentum equations for ion densities and velocities by utilizing divided Jacobian matrices in matrix inversion necessary to the Newton iteration procedure. The code has been applied to Martian nightside ionosphere models, as an example computation. The computed density profiles of $O^+,\;OH^+$, and $HCO^+$ differ by more than a factor of 2 at altitudes higher than 200 km from a simple diffusion model, whereas the density profile of the dominant ion, $O_2^+$, changes little. Especially, the density profile of $HCO^+$ is reduced by a factor of about 10 and its peak altitude is lowered by about 40 km relative to a simple diffusion model in which $HCO^+$ ions are assumed to diffuse through non-moving ion background, $O_2^+$. The computed effects of the new code on the Martian nightside models are explained readily in terms of ion velocities that were solved together with ion densities, which were not available from diffusion models. The new code should thus be expected as a significantly improved tool for planetary ionosphere modelling.

• Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.45 no.2
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• pp.39-48
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• 2012

We investigate non-LTE effects on the $H_3^+$ level populations to help the analysis of the observed 2 and 3.5 micron $H_3^+$ emissions from the Jovian ionosphere. We begin by constructing a simple three-level model, in order to compute the intensity ratio of the R(3,4) line in the hot band to the Q(1,0) line in the fundamental band, which have been observed in the Jovian auroral regions. We find that non-LTE effects produce only small changes in the intensity ratios for ambient $H_2$ densities less than or equal to $5{\times}10^{11}cm^{-3}$. We then construct two comprehensive models by including all the collisional and radiative transitions between pairs of more than a thousand known $H_3^+$ rovibrational levels with energies less than 10000 $cm^{-1}$. By employing these models, we find that the intensity ratios of the lines in the hot and fundamental bands are affected greatly by non-LTE effects, but the details depend sensitively on the number of collisional and radiative transitions included in the models. Non-LTE effects on the rovibrational population become evident at about the same ambient $H_2$ densities in the comprehensive models as in the three-level model. However, the models show that rotational temperatures derived from the intensities of rotational lines in the ${\nu}_2$ and $2{\nu}_2$ bands may differ significantly from the ambie temperatures in the non-LTE regime. We find that significant non-LTE effects appear near and above the $H_3^+$ peak, and that the kinetic temperatures in the Jovian thermospheric temperatures derived from the observed line ratios in the 2 and 3.5 micron $H_3^+$ emissions are highly model dependent.

• Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.49 no.3
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• pp.73-81
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• 2016

We report the characterization of a massive (m_p = 3.9±1.4M_jup) microlensing planet (OGLE-2015-BLG-0954Lb) orbiting an M dwarf host (M = 0.33 ± 0.12M_⊙) at a distance toward the Galactic bulge of $0.6^{+0.4}_{-0.2}kpc$, which is extremely nearby by microlensing standards. The planet-host projected separation is a⊥ ~ 1.2AU. The characterization was made possible by the wide-field (4 deg²) high cadence (Γ = 6 hr^–1) monitoring of the Korea Microlensing Telescope Network (KMTNet), which had two of its three telescopes in commissioning operations at the time of the planetary anomaly. The source crossing time t_* = 16 min is among the shortest ever published. The high-cadence, wide-field observations that are the hallmark of KMTNet are the only way to routinely capture such short crossings. High-cadence resolution of short caustic crossings will preferentially lead to mass and distance measurements for the lens. This is because the short crossing time typically implies a nearby lens, which enables the measurement of additional effects (bright lens and/or microlens parallax). When combined with the measured crossing time, these effects can yield planet/host masses and distance.