• Title/Summary/Keyword: astronomical instruments

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THE NEXT-GENERATION INFRARED SPACE MISSION SPICA: PROJECT UPDATES

  • Nakagawa, Takao;Shibai, Hiroshi;Kaneda, Hidehiro;Kohno, Kotaro;Matsuhara, Hideo;Ogawa, Hiroyuki;Onaka, Takashi;Roelfsema, Peter;Yamada, Toru;SPICA Team
    • Publications of The Korean Astronomical Society
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    • v.32 no.1
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    • pp.331-335
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    • 2017
  • We present project updates of the next-generation infrared space mission SPICA (Space Infrared Telescope for Cosmology and Astrophysics) as of November 2015. SPICA is optimized for mid- and far-infrared astronomy with unprecedented sensitivity, which will be achieved with a cryogenically cooled (below 8 K), large (2.5 m) telescope. SPICA is expected to address a number of key questions in various fields of astrophysics, ranging from studies of the star-formation history in the universe to the formation and evolution of planetary systems. The international collaboration framework of SPICA has been revisited. SPICA under the new framework passed the Mission Definition Review by JAXA in 2015. A proposal under the new framework to ESA is being prepared. The target launch year in the new framework is 2027/28.

The Luminosity/Spectral Lag Relations of the Short GRBs with Extended Emission

  • Jo, Yun-A;Chang, Heon-Young
    • The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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    • v.41 no.2
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    • pp.52.1-52.1
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    • 2016
  • The Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs) are classified into the long GRBs (LGRBs) and the short GRBs (SGRBs). Their progenitors are expected to be different because they have its own distinct characteristics. Occasionally, the SGRBs having faint extended emission (EGRBs) are observed. The EGRBs exhibit the analogous properties that the SGRBs have, but observed T90 of the EGRBs is longer than two seconds as the LGRBs. Because the EGRBs have characteristics of the LGRBs and the SGRBs, study of the EGRBs is important to understand origins of the GRBs. In this study, we obtain the luminosity relations of the EGRBs observed by Swift/BAT. We compare these results with luminosity relations on the LGRBs and SGRBs. In addition, we examine the spectral lag relations of spike and extended emission component of the EGRBs detected by CGRO/BATSE, Konus/WIND, Swift/BAT, Fermi/GBM and compare to each other. We find that the luminosity relations of the EGRBs present different results with the LGRBs and the SGRBs. In the spectral lag relations, extended emission component expresses opposite results compared with spike component. Furthermore, the spectral lag relations from the four instruments came up with different outcomes to each other.

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THE BOES CCD CAMERA II. CHARACTERISTICS OF THE CCD (BOES CCD 카메라 II. 카메라의 특성)

  • Park, B.G.;Seong, H.C.;Jang, J.G.;Jang, B.H.;Lee, B.C.;Park, Y.H.;Kim, K.M.;Han, I.
    • Publications of The Korean Astronomical Society
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    • v.18 no.1
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    • pp.75-79
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    • 2003
  • The characteristics of the BOES (Bohyunsan Observatory Echelle Spectrograph) CCD camera is presented. In order to get optimum gain and readout noise of the CCD, we examine the variation of the gain and readout noise by changing the value of output drain voltage of the CCD and measuring the gain using transfer curve, which is defined as the plot of variance versus mean exposure level of a homogeneous light onto the CCD surface. The gain and readout noises are optimised to be 0.5e$^-$/ADU and 3e$^-$, which is good for highest signal-to-noise ratio and contrast for the low light level characteristics of the BOES. We also measure the dark count of the CCD by getting five dark images with 3600 seconds exposure time. The mean dark count from median stacked dark images is essentially zero. A table of positions of defected pixels is also presented.

100-GHZ BAND TEST OBSERVATIONS OF THE KVN 21-M RADIO TELESCOPES

  • Kim, Kee-Tae;Byun, Do-Young;Je, Do-Heung;Wi, Seog-Oh;Bae, Jae-Han;Jung, Tae-Hyun;Lee, Chang-Hoon;Han, Seog-Tae;Song, Min-Gyu;Jung, Jae-Hoon;Chung, Hyun-Soo;Kim, Hyo-Ryung;Kim, Bong-Gyu
    • Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
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    • v.44 no.3
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    • pp.81-87
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    • 2011
  • We carry out 100-GHz band test observations with the newly-constructed KVN 21-m radio telescopes in order to evaluate their performance. The three telescopes have similar performance parameters. The pointing accuracies are about 4" rms for the entire sky. The main beam sizes are about 30" (FWHMs), which is nearly the diffraction limit of the telescopes at the observing frequency (97 GHz). The measured aperture and main-beam efficiencies are about 52% and 46%, respectively, for all three telescopes. The estimated moon efficiency is ~84% for the KVN Tamna telescope. The first sidelobes appear 50" (~1.6${\times}$FWHM) from the main beam centers and the levels are on average -14 dB.

THE STUDY OF SCATTERING IN THE ISM WITH HIGH RESOLUTION OBSERVATIONS OF OH MASERS

  • Migenes, Victor;Slysh, V.I.;Velasco, A.E.Ruis;Villalpando, S.
    • Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
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    • v.40 no.4
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    • pp.131-132
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    • 2007
  • The research of OH maser emission sources with high angular resolution is complicated by the effects of interstellar scattering: more over, most of the OH maser sources are located in the galactic plane where the scattering is largest. However, the data available from pulsar studies on the spatial distribution of the amount of scattering indicate that there is a strong non-uniformity in the distribution of the amount of scattering material. There are directions in the galactic plane where the scattering is an order of magnitude higher than the average, as well as directions where the scattering is much lower. The latter provide an opportunity to investigate OH masers with the full angular resolution offered by very long baseline interferometry instruments, like the VLBA, and measure their true angular size, shape and brightness temperature. We have observed approximately 100 OH maser sources, distributed all over the northern hemisphere, with the VLBA in order to study the scattering properties of the interstellar medium.

Software Design of CQUEAN

  • Jeong, Hyeon-Ju;Park, Won-Kee;Kim, Eun-Bin;Choi, Chang-Su;Pak, Soo-Jong;Im, Myung-Shin;Kim, Jung-Hoon
    • The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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    • v.35 no.1
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    • pp.39.1-39.1
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    • 2010
  • We are developing a CCD camera named CQUEAN (Camera for Quasars in Early Universe) to search for quasars at z > 7. CQUEAN has a 1024*1024 deep depletion CCD chip and will be attached to 2.1m Otto-Struve Telescope at McDonald Observatory, USA. Although commercial software for the CCD camera is provided by the vendor, we are going to develop our own software to control the other instruments as well, to carry out efficient observation. There are four major parts in our software: Instrument control part controls the camera and filter wheel to obtain imaging data. Quick look window is to display acquired imaging data for quick inspection. Telescope control part interfaces with Telescope Control System (TCS) to move the telescope and to get time or coordinate information. Finally, Observation scripting facility part carries out a series of short exposures in a batch. The whole software will be written in python on linux platform, using the instrument control software libraries provided by the vendors.

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Exploit the Unexploited : the Potential of the PAH 3.3mm emission feature as a star formation rate proxy and beyond

  • Kim, Ji-Hoon;Im, Myung-Shim;Lee, Hyung-Mok;Lee, Myung-Gyoon;AMUSES team, AMUSES team
    • The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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    • v.35 no.2
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    • pp.40.2-40.2
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    • 2010
  • Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) features have emerged as one of the most important infrared (IR) features since these PAH features dominate mid-IR spectra of galaxies and are ubiquitous within galactic and extragalactic objects. These PAH features have the potentials to become reliable star formation rate (SFR) proxies and diagnostics of physical conditions of interstellar medium, such as ionization states of dust grains and grain sizes. While constructing an unbiased library of 44 sample galaxies selected from 5MUSES sample, AKARI mJY Unbiased Survey of Extragalactic Sources in 5MUSES (AMUSES) intends to measure and to calibrate the PAH 3.3 mm emission feature which has not been studied extensively due to its weak strength and dearth of capable instruments. Out of 20 target galaxies, we detected the 3.3mm feature from eight galaxies and measured their line strengths, line widths and line ratios with other PAH emission features. Sample galaxies whose spectral energy distributions (SEDs) are classified as starburst-type have clearly stronger 3.3mm emission features than ones with AGN-type SEDs. We also found that there is a correlation between the PAH 3.3mm luminosity and total IR luminosity within our sample galaxies, albeit a large scatter. We further discuss implications of our results.

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Multivariate Auxiliary Channel Classification using Artificial Neural Networks for LIGO Gravitational-Wave Detector

  • Oh, Sang-Hoon;Oh, John J.;Kim, Young-Min;Lee, Chang-Hwan;Vaulin, Ruslan;Hodge, Kari;Katsavounidis, Erik;Blackburn, Lindy;Biswas, Rahul
    • The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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    • v.36 no.2
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    • pp.131.2-131.2
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    • 2011
  • We present performance of artificial neural network multivariate classifier in identifying non-astrophysical origin noise transients from the gravitational wave channel of Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO). LIGO has successfully conducted six science runs, achieving the sensitivity as planned and producing many fruitful scientific results. It has been well observed that the detector noise is non-Gaussian and non-stationary, which results in large excess of noise transients called glitches arising from instrumental and environmental artifacts. Great efforts have been committed to reduce the glitches by tuning the detector instruments and by vetoing them but further improvement is still needed. To this end, there have been efforts to incorporate data from hundreds of auxiliary, physical and environmental channels into identifying the glitches in the gravitational wave channel. We introduce a multivariate classification method using Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) that efficiently handles large number of variables. In this poster, we present preliminary results of the application of our ANN algorithm to data from LIGO's Science Run 4 and compare its performance with conventional vetoing method.

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Development of the Simulator for FPC-G, the Focal Plane Fine Guiding Camera for SPICA

  • Pyo, Jeonghyun;Jeong, Woong-Seob;Lee, Chol;Kim, Son-Goo;Lee, Dae-Hee
    • The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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    • v.38 no.1
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    • pp.76.2-76.2
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    • 2013
  • SPICA(SPace Infrared Telescope for Cosmology and Astrophysics) is an infrared space observatory with cooled telescope of 3 m aperture. Because of its large aperture, near- and mid-infrared instruments onboard SPICA require fine guidance with attitude accuracy less than 0.1 arcsecond. The FPC-G is a focal plane camera to achieve this high attitude accuracy and KASI is leading its development. The SPICA project is now under the Risk Mitigation Phase 2 (RMP2) and one of major risks is to satisfy the requirement of pointing and attitude control. To assess the impacts of disturbance sources on the attitude control and devise methods to mitigate possible risks, a software simulator of the FPC-G is under the development. In this presentation, we report the status of development of the simulator and the development plan during the RMP2.

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The optical spectra of zodiacal light

  • Yang, Hongu;Ishiguro, Masateru
    • The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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    • v.38 no.1
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    • pp.60.1-60.1
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    • 2013
  • Numerous dust particles are scattered in the interplanetary space of the solar system (Interplanetary Dust Particles; IDPs). The origin of the IDPs is one of the major questions in the solar system astronomy because IDPs are being removed from the solar system within a few million years by photon drag. Comets and asteroids were pointed out as the possible sources of IDPs. Although several dust supplying mechanisms from comets and asteroids have been revealed, amount of contribution from each sources are still not clear. Zodiacal light is sunlight scattered by IDPs. Spectra of zodiacal light can supply important observational clue to reveal the origin of the IDPs, because comets and each type of asteroids have different kind of spectra. However, reflectance spectrum of zodiacal light was not measured at the wavelength of weak atmospheric contamination. We measured the reflectance spectra of zodiacal light from $5000{\AA}$ to $7000{\AA}$. We used open data obtained by the Subaru/FOCAS instruments archived in the SMOKA database. From the longslit spectrum data, we measured spectrum of sky background and estimated flux from the sources other than the zodiacal light. We compared it with the spectra of each type of minor bodies in the solar system, and meteorites originated from these bodies.

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