• 천문학회지
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• 제52권4호
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• pp.109-119
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• 2019

While the reverberation mapping technique is the best available method for measuring black hole mass in active galactic nuclei (AGNs) beyond the local volume, this method has been mainly applied to relatively low-to-moderate luminosity AGNs at low redshift. We present the strategy of the Seoul National University AGN Monitoring Project, which aims at measuring the time delay of the $H{\beta}$ line emission with respect to AGN continuum, using a sample of relatively high luminosity AGNs out to redshift z ~ 0.5. We present simulated cross correlation results based on a number of mock light curves, in order to optimally determine monitoring duration and cadence. We describe our campaign strategy based on the simulation results and the availability of observing facilities. We present the sample selection, and the properties of the selected 100 AGNs, including the optical luminosity, expected time lag, black hole mass, and Eddington ratio.

• 천문학회보
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• 제35권1호
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• pp.80-80
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• 2010

About 50% of Active Galactic Nuclei(AGNs) are found to be red and dust-obscured. They are believed to be in an early dusty stage of AGNs evolution or affected by dust torus in the direction of line of sight. However, optical spectrum is affected by dust extinction, making it difficult to study their properties, such as FWHM and luminosity. In order to reveal the mass of central Black Hole(BH) in red AGN, we establish a new BH mass estimator for typical type1 AGNs using Near InfraRed(NIR) hydrogen line($P_{\alpha}$ and $P_{\beta}$), since these lines are at longer wavelength, less affected by dust extinction than optical hydrogen lines, such as $H_{\alpha}$ and $H_{\alpha}$. To derive the new empirical formula, we use a sample of well-known 36 AGN with a wide BH mass range of $10^6-10^9\;M_{\odot}$, where $M_{BH}s$ are estimated by reverberation mapping method and single epoch method. The $P_{\alpha}/P_{\beta}$ luminosities and FWHMs are derived by analyzing IRTF NIR spectra or taken from literature values. We show that luminosities and FWHMs of these lines correlate well with those of Balmer lines. Suggesting that Paschen and Balmer broad lines are originated from same region. Finally, we present the new $M_{BH}$ formula that are based on $P_{\alpha}/P_{\beta}$ luminosity and FWHM. We hope that our result will be used for investigating red AGNs.

• 천문학논총
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• 제30권2호
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• pp.637-639
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• 2015

The Korean very-long-baseline interferometry (VLBI) network (KVN) and VLBI Exploration of Radio Astrometry (VERA) Array (KaVA) is the first international VLBI array dedicated to high-frequency (23 GHz (K-band) and 43 GHz (Q-band)) observations in East Asia. To evaluate the imagine capability of KaVA, we performed imaging observations of three bright active galactic nuclei (AGNs) known for their complex morphologies: 4C 39.25, 3C 273, and M87 by KaVA at K-/Q-band. Our KaVA images reveal extended outflows with complex substructure such as knots and limb brightening, in agreement with previous observations by other VLBI facilities. Angular resolutions are better than 1.4 and 0.8 milliarcsecond (max) at K-/Q-band, respectively. KaVA achieves a high dynamic range of ~1000, more than three times the value achieved by VERA. We conclude that KaVA is a powerful array with a great potential for the study of AGN outflows, at least comparable to the best existing radio interferometric arrays.

• 천문학회보
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• 제45권1호
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• pp.63.2-63.2
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• 2020

FLASH is a blind neutral hydrogen (HI) absorption line survey, eventually targeting about 100,000 background radio continuum sources in the entire southern sky using the full 36-antenna of the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP). Our primary goal is to search for associated and intervening HI absorption lines in the intermediate redshift range 0.4 < z < 1.0. The survey aims to understand the evolution of HI gas in galaxies as well as various physical mechanisms in active galactic nuclei, such as accretion and feedback processes. In this poster, we give an overview of the FLASH survey and present the preliminary results from our first 100-hrs of pilot observations. The latest survey data covers 1,000 square degrees and is ideal for validating observation and data processing in the continuous 300MHz-width low frequency ASKAP band (700-1000MHz). One of the crucial objectives of the pilot survey is to establish the analysis methodology that will be applied to upcoming large absorption surveys in the future. We discuss our data quality validation and present some detections of associated/intervening HI absorption lines. These absorption lines allow us to trace the cold gas properties of active and normal galaxies at higher redshifts where the HI emission line is too weak to be detectable.

• 천문학회보
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• 제41권1호
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• pp.54.1-54.1
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• 2016

Multi-wavelength variability is a staple of active galactic nuclei (AGN). Optical variability probes the nature of the central engine of AGN at smaller linear scales than conventional imaging and spectroscopic techniques. Previous studies have shown that optical variability is more prevalent at longer timescales and at shorter wavelengths. Intra-night variability can be explained through the damped random walk model but small samples and inhomogeneous data have made constraining this model hard. To understand the properties and physical mechanism of intra-night optical variability, we are performing the KMTNet Active Nuclei Variability Survey (KANVaS). Using KMTNet, we aim to study the intra-night variability of ~1000 AGN at a magnitude depth of ~19mag in R band over a total area of ${\sim}24deg^2$ on the sky. Test data in the COSMOS, XMM-LSS, and S82-2 fields was obtained over 4, 6, and 8 nights respectively during 2015, in B, V, R, and I bands. Each night was composed of 5-13 epoch with ~30 min cadence and 80-120 sec exposure times. As a pilot study, we analyzed data in the COSMOS field where we reach a magnitude depth of ~19.5 in R band (at S/N~100) with seeing varying between 1.5-2.0 arcsec. We used the Chandra-COSMOS catalog to identify 166 AGNs among 549 AGNs at B<23. We performed differential photometry between the selected AGN and nearby stars, achieving photometric uncertainty ~0.01mag. We employ various standard time-series analysis tools to identify variable AGN, including the chi-square test. Preliminarily results indicate that intra-night variability is found for ~17%, 17%, 8% and 7% of all X-ray selected AGN in the B, V, R, and I band, respectively. The majority of the identified variable AGN are classified as Type 1 AGN, with only a handful of Type 2 AGN showing evidence for variability. The work done so far confirms there are more variable AGN at shorter wavelengths and that intra-night variability most likely originates in the accretion disk of these objects. We will briefly discuss the quality of the data, challenges we encountered, solutions we employed for this work, and our updated future plans.

• 천문학논총
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• 제30권2호
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• pp.447-449
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• 2015

Although the link between activity in the nuclei of galaxy and galactic mergers has been under scrutiny for several years, it is still unclear to what extent and for which populations of active galaxies merger-triggered activity is relevant. The environments of AGN allow an indirect probe of the past merger history and future merger probability of these systems, suffering less from sensitivity issues when extended to higher redshifts than traditional morphological studies of AGN host galaxies. Here we present results from our investigation of the environment of radio selected sources out to a redshift z=2. We employ the first data release J-band catalog of the new near-IR Infrared Medium-Deep Survey (IMS), 1.4 GHz radio data from the Faint Images of the Radio Sky at Twenty-cm (FIRST) survey and a deep dedicated VLA survey of the VIMOS field, covering a combined total of 20 sq. degrees. At a flux limit of the combined radio catalog of 0.1 mJy, we probe over 8 orders of magnitude of radio luminosity. Using the second closest neighbor density parameters, we test whether active galaxies inhabit denser environments. We find evidence for a sub-population of radio-selected AGN that reside in significantly overdense environments at small scales, although we do not find significant overdensities for the bulk of our sample. We show that radio-AGN in the most underdense environments have vigorous ongoing star formation. We interpret these results in terms of the triggering and fuelling mechanism of radio-AGN.

• 천문학회지
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• 제36권3호
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• pp.167-175
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• 2003

There is accumulating evidence for a strong link between nuclear starbursts and AGN. Molecular gas in the central regions of galaxies plays a critical role in fueling nuclear starburst activity and feeding central AGN. The dense molecular ISM is accreted to the nuclear regions by stellar bars and galactic interactions. Here we describe recent observational results for the OB star forming regions in M51 and the nuclear star burst in Arp 220 - both of which have approximately the same rate of star formation per unit mass of ISM. We suggest that the maximum efficiency for forming young stars is an Eddington-like limit imposed by the radiation pressure of newly formed stars acting on the interstellar dust. This limit corresponds to approximately 500 $L_{\bigodot} / M_{\bigodot}$ for optically thick regions in which the radiation has been degraded to the NIR. Interestingly, we note that some of the same considerations can be important in AGN where the source of fuel is provided by stellar evolution mass-loss or ISM accretion. Most of the stellar mass-loss occurs from evolving red giant stars and whether their mass-loss can be accreted to a central AGN or not depends on the radiative opacity of the mass-loss material. The latter depends on whether the dust survives or is sublimated (due to radiative heating). This, in turn, is determined by the AGN luminosity and the distance of the mass-loss stars from the AGN. Several AGN phenomena such as the broad emission and absorption lines may arise in this stellar mass-loss material. The same radiation pressure limit to the accretion may arise if the AGN fuel is from the ISM since the ISM dust-to-gas ratio is the same as that of stellar mass-loss.

• 천문학회보
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• 제36권2호
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• pp.61.2-61.2
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• 2011

Low-ionization nuclear emission-line regions (LINERs) have been generally regarded to be powered by active galactic nuclei (AGNs), yet still a number of alternative explanations on the origin of LINER emission are suggested; for example, planetary nebulae nuclei of massive stars, supernovae shocks from death of massive stars, and old stellar populations. Interestingly, a majority of recent star formation early-type galaxies (ETGs) in local universe presents such LINER emission lines. Given that situation, revealing the true nature of LINERs is a crucial step to constrain the evolution path to quiescent ETGs. To resolve the issue, we use Keck/LRIS to obtain spatially resolved spectra on a carefully selected ETG. The ETG SDSS J091628.05+420818.7 at redshift z ~ 0.024 shows modest LINER emission line features without any detection of 21 cm radio continuum nor X-ray emission. We perform a stellar continuum subtraction and measure emission line strengths and their uncertainties for each spectrum from five apertures along the slit with size of 1 arcsecond (~0.5 kpc). We find that extended spatial distributions of four emission lines $H{\alpha}$, $H{\beta}$, [OIII]${\lambda}5007$, and [NII]${\lambda}6583$, and they can be explained by central emission blurring effect. We conclude that the emissions seem to be centrally concentrated, indicating the AGN-nature of LINERs.

• 천문학회보
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• 제40권1호
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• pp.42.2-42.2
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• 2015

High frequency peakers (HFPs) are promising candidates for young active galactic nuclei (AGNs). Their small physical scale (< 1 kpc) and radio spectrum peaked at high frequency (> 5 GHz) are suggestive that it has been only about $10^2-10^3$ years since a central massive black hole in their host galaxies was launched. Until recently however, long-term monitoring radio observations at frequencies which are high enough to cover the true peak of HFP candidates were rare. Therefore, previous HFP samples are often contaminated by blazars, which are highly variable, hence may show a similar radio spectrum as HFPs depending on the observational epoch. In this work, we challenge to identify genuine young AGNs by monitoring HFP candidates at high radio frequencies. We performed single-dish monitoring of 19 candidates in 18 epochs over 2.5 years at 22 and 43 GHz using the Korean VLBI Network (KVN). Also, using KaVA, a combined array of the KVN and the VERA in Japan, we carried out 22 GHz VLBI observations of two HFPs and one blazar selected from our sample in order to compare their parsec scale (milli-arcsecond scale) morphology. HFPs are expected to have double/triple features, so called compact symmetric objects, which are scaled-down versions of extended radio galaxies, while blazars typically show core-jet morphology. We discuss the properties of AGNs at their very early evolutionary stage based on the results of the KVN and KaVA observations.

• 천문학회보
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• 제40권1호
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• pp.48.1-48.1
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• 2015

We investigate the role of small-scale and large-scale environments in triggering nuclear activity of the local galaxies using a volume-limited sample with $M_r$ < -19.5 and 0.02 < z < 0.0685 from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 7. To fix the mass of the supermassive black hole in its host galaxy, we limit the central velocity dispersion of the sample galaxies. The active galactic nuclei (AGN) host sample is composed of Type II AGNs identified with flux ratios of narrow emission lines with S/N > 6. In this study, we find that the AGN fraction of late-type host galaxies are commonly larger than of early type galaxies. The AGN fraction of host galaxy with late-type nearest neighbor starts to increase as the host galaxy approaches the virial radius of the nearest neighbor (about a few hundred kpc scale). Our result may support the idea that the hydrodynamic interaction with the nearest neighbor plays an important role in triggering the nuclear activity of galaxy. The early-type galaxies in high density regions show decline of AGN activity compared to ones in lower density regions, whereas the direction of the environmental dependence of AGN activity for late-type galaxies is rather opposite. We also find that the environmental dependence of star formation rate is analogous to one of AGN activity except in the high density region.