• Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.47 no.3
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• pp.115-122
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• 2014

The New Vacuum Solar Telescope (NVST) is a 1-meter vacuum solar telescope that aims to observe the fine structures of active regions on the Sun. The main tasks of the NVST are high resolution imaging and spectral observations, including the measurements of the solar magnetic field. The NVST has been collecting more than 20 million FITS files since it began routine observations in 2012 and produces maximum observational records of 120 thousand files in a day. Given the large amount of files, the effective archiving and retrieval of files becomes a critical and urgent problem. In this study, we implement a new data archiving system for the NVST based on the Fastbit Not Only Structured Query Language (NoSQL) database. Comparing to the relational database (i.e., MySQL; My Structured Query Language), the Fastbit database manifests distinctive advantages on indexing and querying performance. In a large scale database of 40 million records, the multi-field combined query response time of Fastbit database is about 15 times faster and fully meets the requirements of the NVST. Our slestudy brings a new idea for massive astronomical data archiving and would contribute to the design of data management systems for other astronomical telescopes.

• Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.46 no.6
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• pp.225-234
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• 2013

We develop a radio receiver system operating at ${\lambda}{\sim}1.3$ mm for the 6 m telescope of Seoul Radio Astronomy Observatory. It consists of a dual polarization receiver, a couple of IF processing units, two FFT spectrometers, and associated software. By adopting sideband-separating superconductor mixers with image band terminated to waveguide load at 4.2 K, we achieve $T_{RX}{\leq}100$ K and $T_{sys}$ less than 150 K at best weather condition over 210-250 GHz frequency range. The intermediate frequency signal of 3.5-4.5 GHz is down converted to 0-1 GHz and fed into the FFT spectrometers. The spectrometer covers 1 GHz bandwidth with a spectral resolution of 61 KHz. Test observations are conducted toward several radio sources to evaluate the performance of the system. Aperture and beam efficiencies measured by observing planets are found to be typically 44 ~ 59% and 47 ~ 61%, respectively over the RF band, which are consistent with those measured at 3 mm band previously.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.41 no.2
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• pp.31.1-31.1
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• 2016

SNe light curves have been used to understand the expansion history of the universe, and a lot of efforts have gone into understanding the overall shape of the radioactively powered light curve. However, we still have little direct observational evidence for the theorized SN progenitor systems. Recent studies suggest that the light curve of a supernova shortly after its explosion (< 1 day) contains valuable information about its progenitor system and can be used to set a limit on the progenitor size, R*. In order to catch the early light curve of SNe explosion and understand SNe progenitors, we are performing a ~8hr interval monitoring survey of nearby galaxies (d < 50 Mpc) with 1-m class telescopes around the world. Through this survey, we expect to catch the very early precursor emission as faint as R=21 mag (~0.1 Rsun for the progenitor). In this talk, we outline this project, and present a few scientific highlights, such as the early light curve of SN 2015F in NGC 2442.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.41 no.2
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• pp.52.3-53
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• 2016

일반적으로 사용되는 소구경 망원경은 경통에 의한 차폐로 인해 내부 구조를 보기 쉽지 않으므로, 망원경 광학계를 이해하기에는 적합하지 않다. 본 연구에서는 최소한의 배플 만을 사용하여 경통이 없는 구조의 개방형 망원경을 설계 및 제작하였다. 개발된 변환식 반사망원경 키트(TRT Kit, Transformable Reflecting Telescope Kit)는 부경 모듈을 교체하는 방식만으로 뉴턴식 망원경(Newtonian Telescope), 카세그레인식 망원경(Cassegrain Telescope), 그리고 그레고리식 망원경(Gregorian Telescope)으로 변형하는 것이 가능하다. 주경, 부경을 비롯한 망원경의 모든 부분은 사용자가 직접조립할 수 있도록 모듈화(Modularization) 하였다. 또한 부경에 부착된 슬라이딩 장치 및 리니어 스테이지(Linear Stage)는 망원경의 초점을 정밀하게 맞출 수 있도록 설계하였다. TRT Kit를 이용하여 학생들은 세 가지 형태의 망원경 광학계를 직접 조립하고 그 구조 및 성능을 비교해 볼 수 있으며, 광축 정렬, 정밀 초점 조절 과정을 통해 기본적인 광학계의 원리를 이해 할 수 있다.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.41 no.2
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• pp.49.2-49.2
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• 2016

The number of discovery of asteroids with peculiar rotational states has recently increased, and hence a novel approach for lightcurve analysis is considered to be critical. In order to investigate objects such as Non-Principal Axis (NPA) rotator, we selected a NPA candidate, (5247) Kryolv as our target considering its Principal Axis Rotation (PAR) code and the visibility in early 2016. The observations of Krylov were made using Korea Microlensing Telescope Network (KMTNet) 1.6 m telescopes installed at the three southern sites with TO (Target of Opportunity) observation mode. We conducted R-band time-series photometry over a total of 51 nights from January to April 2016 with several exposures during each allocated run. The ensemble normalization photometry was employed using the AAVSO Photomtric All-Sky Survey (APASS) catalog for the standardization. We successfully confirmed its NPA spin state based on the deviation from the reduced lightcurve, and thus Krylov is recorded as the first NPA rotator of its kind in the main-belt, with its precession and rotation periods, $P{\varphi}=81.18h$ and $P_{\Psi}=67.17h$, respectively. In this paper, we present the spin direction, the 3D shape model and taxonomy of the newly confirmed NPA asteroid (5247) Krylov.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.41 no.2
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• pp.47.1-47.1
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• 2016

We present a preliminary result of search for CO molecular outflows toward a sample of 68 candidate Very Low Luminosity Objects (VeLLOs; Lint ${\leq}0.1L_{\odot}$) to help to understand their physical properties. The sources have been identified using the data at IR to radio wavelengths by M. Kim et al. 2016 toward nearby star-forming regions in the Gould belt. These sources were observed in rotational transitions 2-1 and 3-2 of $^{12}CO$, $^{13}CO$, and $C^{18}O$ molecules with SRAO, CSO, JCMT, and ASTE telescopes. In the beginning of our survey we made a single pointing observation in $^{12}CO$ 2-1 or 3-2 lines for our sample, identifying 53 sources as potential outflow candidates from their line wing features. We made full or partial mapping observations for these candidates with the same lines, finding 33 sources with bipolar or one-sided outflow features. Out of these 33 sources, 6 VeLLOs are previously known sources to have their outflows and 27 VeLLOs are found to be new outflow sources identified from this study. We estimated outflow properties with corrections for excitation temperature, optical depth, and inclination. Their outflow forces range from $8.7{\times}10^{-10}$ to $6.0{\times}10^{-5}M_{\odot}\;km\;s^{-1}yr^{-1}$ with a median value of $3.6{\times}10^{-7}M_{\odot}\;km\;s^{-1}yr^{-1}$, indicating that most of the VeLLOs are less powerful than those for protostars. Their accretion luminosities vary from $9.7{\times}10^{-9}$ to $166L_{\odot}$ with a median value of $0.004L_{\odot}$, implying that most VeLLOs have larger ratios of the accretion luminosity to the internal luminosity but a significant number of VeLLOs have smaller ratios. This result suggests that many of the VeLLOs can be explained with episodic accretion but a significant number of VeLLOs cannot.

• Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.51 no.3
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• pp.65-71
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• 2018

The near real-time speckle masking reconstruction technique has been developed to accelerate the processing of solar images to achieve high resolutions for ground-based solar telescopes. However, the reconstruction of solar subimages in such a speckle reconstruction is very time-consuming. We design and implement a new parallel speckle masking reconstruction algorithm based on the Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA) on General Purpose Graphics Processing Units (GPGPU). Tests are performed to validate the correctness of our program on NVIDIA GPGPU. Details of several parallel reconstruction steps are presented, and the parallel implementation between various modules shows a significant speed increase compared to the previous serial implementations. In addition, we present a comparison of runtimes across serial programs, the OpenMP-based method, and the new parallel method. The new parallel method shows a clear advantage for large scale data processing, and a speedup of around 9 to 10 is achieved in reconstructing one solar subimage of $256{\times}256pixels$. The speedup performance of the new parallel method exceeds that of OpenMP-based method overall. We conclude that the new parallel method would be of value, and contribute to real-time reconstruction of an entire solar image.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.237-243
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• 2017

In this paper, the detection performance of the electro-optical telescopes which observes and surveils space objects including artificial satellites, is analyzed. To perform the Modeling & Simulation(M&S) based analysis, satellite orbit model, telescope model, and the atmospheric model are constructed and a detection scenario observing the satellite is organized. Based on the organized scenario, pointing accuracy is analyzed according to the Field of View(FOV), which is one of the key factors of the telescope, considering pointing angle command error. In accordance with the preceding result, detection possibility according to the pixel-count of the detector and the FOV of the telescope is analyzed by discerning detection by Signal-to-Noise Ratio(SNR). The result shows that pointing accuracy increases with larger FOV, whereas the detection probability increases with smaller FOV and higher pixel-count. Therefore, major specification of the telescope such as FOV and pixel-count should be determined considering the result of M&S based analysis performed in this paper and the operational circumstances.

• Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.47 no.6
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• pp.293-302
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• 2014

Simultaneous time monitoring observations of $H_2O$ $6_{16}-5_{23}$, SiO J = 1-0, 2-1, 3-2, and $^{29}SiO$ ${\upsilon}=0$, J = 1-0 lines are carried out in the direction of the Mira variable star TX Cam with the Korean VLBI Network single dish radio telescopes. For the first time, the $H_2O$ maser emission from TX Cam is detected near the stellar velocity at five epochs from April 10, 2013 (${\phi}=3.13$) to June 4, 2014 (${\phi}=3.89$) including minimum optical phases. The intensities of $H_2O$ masers are very weak compared to SiO masers. The variation of peak antenna temperature ratios among SiO ${\upsilon}=1$, J = 1-0, J = 2-1, and J = 3-2 masers is investigated according to their phases. The shift of peak velocities of $H_2O$ and SiO masers with respect to the stellar velocity is also investigated according to observed optical phases. The $H_2O$ maser emission occurs around the stellar velocity during our monitoring interval. On the other hand, the peak velocities of SiO masers show a spread compared to the stellar velocity. The peak velocities of SiO J = 2-1, and J = 3-2 masers show a smaller spread with respect to the stellar velocity than those of SiO J = 1-0 masers. These simultaneous observations of multi-frequencies will provide a good constraint for maser pumping models and a good probe for investigating the stellar atmosphere and envelope according to their different excitation conditions.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.42 no.2
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• pp.50.1-50.1
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• 2017

The Non-Principal Axis (NPA) rotators can be clues to spin evolutionary processes of asteroids because their excited spin states evolve due to either internal or external forces. The NPA rotation of (5247) Krylov was confirmed by Lee et al. (2017) based on KMTNet photometric observations during the 2016 apparition. We conducted follow-up observations in 2017 apparition using the 0.6-2.1m telescopes in the northern hemisphere to determine the spin state and shape model of this asteroid. We found that it is rotating in the Short Axis Mode (SAM) based on the determined rotation period ($P_{\psi}=374.6hr$) and precession period ($P_{\phi}=67.48hr$). The greatest and intermediate principal inertia moments are nearly the same as $I_b/I_c=0.94$, but the smallest principal inertia moments are nearly half that of the others, $I_a/I_c=0.43$. This ratio of principal inertia moments suggests that dynamically equivalent shape of this asteroid is close to that of a prolate ellipsoid. In this presentation, we will provide the physical model of (5247) Krylov to discuss its possible spin evolutionary processes that acted on its spin.