• 천문학회보
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• 제42권1호
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• pp.50.2-50.2
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• 2017

We have been carrying out the long-term (3-5 years) AGN monitoring project since October 2015 to investigate the variability and measure the H beta line time lag of 69 nearby (0.06 < z < 0.47) AGNs based on the reverberation mapping method. Our targets have B band magnitudes of 14.4-18.6, luminosities of log L5100 = 45.6-48.1 erg/s, and the expected time lags of 28-597 light days. BVR band images are being taken with ~20-day cadence using MDM 1.3m, LOAO 1m and MDM 2.4m telescopes. Recently, Nickel 1m at Lick and DOAO 1m at Deokheung observatory are joined with photometric observations. Follow-up spectroscopic observations are on-going using the Lick 3m and MDM 2.4m telescopes. In this poster, we will describe our project including sample selection and the observational strategy, and present the preliminary results based on the 1st year photometry.

• 천문학회보
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• 제36권2호
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• pp.122.2-122.2
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• 2011

For more than a decade, NEA (Near-Earth Asteroid) survey teams equipped with 1 meter-class telescopes discovered thousands of NEAs in the northern sky. As of August 2011, some 8,200 NEAs have been cataloged, yet only five percent of them has been investigated for their physical and chemical properties. In order to improve current situation, we propose a deep ecliptic survey utilizing KMTNet, for detection and characterization of NEAs in the southern sky. Thanks to the wide-field capability (four square degrees) of the telescopes, we will be able to considerably expand the search volume carrying out precision photometry down to 21.5th magnitude. We plan to focus our survey on opposition and two "sweet spots" in the ecliptic belt. Since SDSS colors characterize mineralogical properties of NEAs, g', r', i', z' filters will be employed. Based on the round-the-clock observation, we will study their rotational properties; for multiple systems, mass, density and other physical parameters can be obtained. We plan to maintain a dedicated database of the physical and mineralogical properties of NEAs. With this archive, it is expected that our understanding on the population will see a drastic change. We also plan to participate in the GAIA Follow-Up Network for ground based observation of the Solar System Objects (GAIA-FUN-SSO). The follow- up astrometry will be performed upon alerts issued by the GAIA-FUN-SSO Central Node in France.

• 천문학논총
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• 제31권3호
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• pp.35-41
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• 2016

We have constructed a wide-field photometric survey system called as the Korea Microlensing Telescope Network (KMTNet) in 2015. It consists of three 1.6 m optical telescopes equipped with mosaic CCD cameras. Four 9k CCDs were installed on the focal plane of each telescope. In this paper, we present the crosstalk analysis of the KMTNet mosaic CCD images. The crosstalk victims caused by bright sources were visible at eight sub-images obtained through different readout ports of each CCD. The crosstalk coefficients were estimated to be several tens of $10^{-4}$ in maximum, differing from sub-image to sub-image, and the non-linearity effect certainly appeared at the victims made from saturated sources. We developed software functions to correct the crosstalk effect of the KMTNet CCD images. The software functions showed satisfying results to remove clearly most of the crosstalk victims and have been implemented in the KMTNet image processing pipeline since 2015 September.

• 천문학회지
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• 제47권2호
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• pp.43-47
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• 2014

Many advanced ground-based solar telescopes improve the spatial resolution of observation images using an adaptive optics (AO) system. As any AO correction remains only partial, it is necessary to use post-processing image reconstruction techniques such as speckle masking or shift-and-add (SAA) to reconstruct a high-spatial-resolution image from atmospherically degraded solar images. In the New Vacuum Solar Telescope (NVST), the spatial resolution in solar images is improved by frame selection and SAA. In order to overcome the burden of massive speckle data processing, we investigate the possibility of using the speckle reconstruction program in a real-time application at the telescope site. The code has been written in the C programming language and optimized for parallel processing in a multi-processor environment. We analyze the scalability of the code to identify possible bottlenecks, and we conclude that the presented code is capable of being run in real-time reconstruction applications at NVST and future large aperture solar telescopes if care is taken that the multi-processor environment has low latencies between the computation nodes.

• 천문학논총
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• 제30권2호
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• pp.699-701
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• 2015

The high plateaus in west China may provide suitable sites for astronomical observations with the institute's middle-range telescopes and possibly with larger telescopes. Under China-Japan collaborations for site survey in west China, we have been conducting searches for good sites and monitoring their characteristics over several years. As recent results of our site survey show, sites in west Tibet are revealed with a high possibility of good astronomical observations. Weather characteristics at Gar in Ali, Tibet, show its high clear-sky ratios, especially in winter, comparable to Mauna Kea, Hawaii. But it has some wind problem in winter, where stronger wind speeds, over 20m/sec, occur frequently even though the sky is clear. To find calmer sites, we have conducted numerical simulations for the Ali area using the Japan Meteorological Agency NonHydrostatic Model. We have found another site, named ZoZo Hill, near Gar. We will continue to monitor the Gar site to clarify weather characteristics over the whole year and hopefully start to negotiate for site monitoring at ZoZo Hill this year.

• 천문학회보
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• 제37권2호
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• pp.240.2-240.2
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• 2012

AGN(Active Galactic Nucleus) consists of a supermassive black hole located at its center, an accretion disk around the black hole, and bipolar jets. Since May 2011, we have performed the MOGABA(Monitoring Of GAmma-ray Bright AGN) project for observing gamma-ray bright AGN once a week at multifrequencies using KVN(Korean VLBI Network) 21m radio telescopes. The MOGABA project is the observations for measuring the degree of polarization, polarization angle, and total flux of about 20 AGN at 22, 43 and 86GHz. By this project, we are able to investigate polarization characteristics, spectral index, and variation of rotation measure at radio wavelengths of gamma-ray bright AGN and to study possible relation between gamma-ray flares and magnetic field structure change in AGN. According to previous research, gamma-ray flares of some AGN are coincident with large changes in angle of linear polarization. In this paper we report the preliminary results of linear polarization and total flux at 22, 43, 86GHz of gamma-ray bright quasars 3C279 and 1510-089 showing noticeable variation of total flux at 22GHz in late 2011, and discuss possible correlation with gamma ray light curves.

• 천문학회보
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• 제36권1호
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• pp.27.2-27.2
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• 2011

The Kepler(NASA) and CoRoT(ESA) space telescopes are surveying thousands of exoplanet for finding Earth-like exoplanets with similar environments of the Earth. Then the TPF(NASA), DARWIN(ESA) and many large-aperture ground telescopes have plan for spectroscopic observations of these earth-like exoplanets in next decades. Now, it has been started to simulate the disk averaged spectra of the earthlike exoplanets for comparing the observed spectra and suggesting solutions of environment of these planets. Previous research, the simulations are based on radiative transfer method, but these are limited by optical models of Earth system and instruments. We introduce a new simulation method, IRT(Integrated Ray Tracing) to overcome limitations of previous method. The 3 components are defined in IRT; 1)Sun model, 2)Earth system model (Atmosphere, Land and Ocean), 3)Instrument model. The ray tracing in IRT is simulated in composed 3D real scale space from inside the sun model to the detector of instrument. The Sun model has hemisphere structure with Lambertian scattering optical model. Atmosphere is composed of 16 distributed structures and each optical model includes BSDF with using 6SV radiative transfer code. Coastline and 5 kinds of vegetation distribution data are used to land model structure, and its non-Lambertian scattering optical model is defined with the semi-empirical "parametric kernel method" used for MODIS(NASA) and POLDER(CNES) missions. The ocean model includes sea ice cap structure with the monthly sea ice area variation, and sea water optical model which is considering non-lambertian sun-glint scattering. Computation of spectral imaging and radiative transfer performance of Earth system model is tested with hypothetical space instrument in IRT model. Then we calculated the disk averaged spectra of the Earth system model in IRT computation model for 8 cases; 4 viewing orientation cases with full illuminated phase, and 4 illuminated phase cases in a viewing orientation. Finally the DAS results are compared with previous researching results of radiative transfer method.

• 천문학회지
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• 제54권4호
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• pp.113-119
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• 2021

It is difficult for observers to conduct an optical alignment at an observatory without the assistance of an optical engineer if optomechanical parts are to be replaced at night. We present a practical tilt correction method to obtain the optimal optical alignment condition using the symmetricity of optical aberrations of a wide-field on-axis telescope at night. We conducted coarse tilt correction by visually examining the symmetry of two representative star shapes obtained at two guide chips facing each other, such as east-west or north-south pairs. After coarse correction, we observed four sets of small stamp images using four guide cameras located at each cardinal position by changing the focus positions in 10-㎛ increments and passing through the optimum focus position in the range of ±200 ㎛. The standard deviation of each image, as a function of the focus position, was fitted with a second-order polynomial function to derive the optimal focus position at each cardinal edge. We derived the tilt angles from the slopes converted by the distance and the focus position difference between two paired guide chip combinations such as east-west and north-south. We used this method to collimate the on-axis wide-field telescope KMTNet in Chile after replacing two old focus actuators. The total optical alignment time was less than 30 min. Our method is practical and straightforward for maintaining the optical performance of wide-field telescopes such as KMTNet.

• Advances in aircraft and spacecraft science
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• 제9권5호
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• pp.449-462
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• 2022

Space-telescopes placed in the Sun-Earth second Lagrange point (L2) observe the sky following a scan strategy that is usually based on a spin-precession motion. Knowing which regions of the sky will be more observed by the instrument is important for the science operations and the instrument calibration. Computing sky observation parameters numerically (discretizing time and the sky) can consume large amounts of time and computational resources, especially when high resolution isrequired.This problem becomesmore critical if quantities are evaluated at detector level instead of considering the instrument entire Field of View (FoV). In previous studies, the authors have derived analytic solutions for quantities that characterize the observation of each point in the sky in terms of observation time according to the scan strategy parameters and the instrument FoV. Analytic solutions allow to obtain results faster than using numerical methods as well as capture detailed characteristics which can be overseen due to discretization limitations. The original approach is based on the analytic expression of the instrument trace over the sky. Such equations are implicit and thusrequiresthe use of numeric solversto compute the quantities.In this work, a new and simpler approach for computing one ofsuch quantities(mean observation time) is presented.The quantity is first computed for pure spin motion and then the effect of the spin axis precession is incorporated under the assumption that the precession motion is slow compared to the spin motion.In this sense, this new approach further simplifies the analytic approach, sparing the use of numeric solvers, which reduces the complexity of the implementation and the computing time.

• 천문학회보
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• 제46권1호
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• pp.54.4-55
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• 2021

The Seoul National University AGN Monitoring Project (SAMP) is a welldesigned long-term AGN reverberation mapping project. SAMP focuses on the luminous AGNs out to z~0.5 with relative long time lags between AGN continuum and broad emission lines and aims to probe the high-end of the AGN broad line region (BLR) size-luminosity (R-L) relation. The pilot observations started in October 2015 for 100 AGNs to confirm the variability and the H and [O III] emission line strengths. Based on the initial variability test, 48 quasars has been continued spectroscopic monitoring since Feb. 2016 with Lick 3m and MDM 2.4m telescopes with a cadence of ~20 days. Supporting photometric monitoring in B and V band was conducted at multiple facilities including the MDM 1.3m, LOAO, and DOAO telescopes with a cadence of ~10 days. By the time of Feb. 2021, we have obtained five years spectroscopic and photometric data. More than 30 AGNs shows significant variability in five-year baseline and 16 of them show well detected lags between B-band and H. Here, we report some examples of SAMP light curves and lag detections using the first five-year data as well as the location of our 16 targets in the AGN BLR R-L relation. These measurements are consistent with the existing R-L relation and located at the high-end. With the coming data, SAMP are hopefully to report more AGNs with well detected lags. Our results demonstrate the general feasibility and potential of long-term reverberation project with medium cadence for luminous AGNs.