• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
• /
• v.37 no.2
• /
• pp.115.2-115.2
• /
• 2012

In this study we have used the data of various instruments onboard the THEMIS spacecraft to study the characteristics of the outer radiation belt during the ascending phase of solar cycle 24. The most astonishing result is that we discovered four long-term (a month or so) periods during which the belt has nearly disappeared. The first disappearance started late 2008, followed by reappearance in ~a month, and three more similar events repeated until early 2010 when the belt has reappeared. This is well revealed at 719 keV electrons, which is the currently available uppermost energy channel from the THEMIS SST observation, but also seen at even lower energies. Overall consistent features were confirmed using the NOAA-POES observations. The vanished belt periods are associated with extremely weak solar wind conditions, low geomagnetic disturbances (in terms of Kp and AE/AL), greatly suppressed wave (ULF and chorus) activities, greatly reduced storm and substorm activities (little source particle supply), and expanded plasmapause locations. The direct observations of such events shed light on the fundamental question of the origin of the radiation belt, which is the main focus of our presentation.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
• /
• v.37 no.2
• /
• pp.208.1-208.1
• /
• 2012

The Ultra Fast Flash Observatory (UFFO) pathfinder is a payload system on-board the Russian satellite Lomonosov, scheduled to be launched in 2013. The main purpose of the UFFO pathfinder is to observe the early photons from Gamma-Ray Bursts. It consists of two instruments. The first instrument is the UFFO Burst Alert X-ray Trigger telescope (UBAT) for the fast-trigger and detection of GRB location, and the second is the Slewing Mirror Telescope (SMT) for the observation of the UV/optical afterglow from the GRB located by the UBAT. It will provide the first-ever systematic study of UV/optical emission far earlier than 1 sec after trigger. We will present the design, fabrication and the preliminary performance of the UBAT.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
• /
• v.37 no.2
• /
• pp.141.1-141.1
• /
• 2012

CIBER (Cosmic Infrared Background ExpeRiment) is a sounding-rocket borne experiment which is designed to find the evidence of the First stars (Pop.III stars) in the universe. They are expected to be formed between the recombination era at z ~ 1100 and the most distant quasar (z ~ 8). They have never been directly detected due to its faintness so far, but can be observed as a background radiation at around $1{\mu}m$ which is called the Cosmic Near-Infrared Background (CNB). The CIBER is successfully launched on July 10, 2010 at White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico, USA. It consists of three kinds of instruments. One of them is a LRS (Low Resolution Spectrometer) which is a refractive telescope of 5.5 cm aperture with spectral resolution of 20 ~ 30 and wavelength coverage of 0.7 to $2.0{\mu}m$ to measure the spectrum of the CNB. Since LRS detects not only CNB but also stellar components, we can study their spectral features with the broad band advantage especially at around $1{\mu}m$ which is difficult at ground observations because of the atmospheric absorption by water vapor. I identified around 300 stars from observed six fields. If we can classify their spectral types with SED fitting, we can study their physical conditions of the stellar atmosphere as well as making a stellar catalogue of continuous stellar spectrum.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
• /
• v.36 no.1
• /
• pp.27.2-27.2
• /
• 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.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
• /
• v.46 no.1
• /
• pp.45.2-46
• /
• 2021

The Hayabusa 2 mission target asteroid (162173) Ryugu is a near-Earth, carbonaceous (C-type) asteroid. Before the arrival, this asteroid is expected to be covered with mm- to cm- sized grains through the thermal infrared observations [1]. These grains are widely understood to be formed by past impacts with other celestial bodies and fractures induced by thermal fatigue [2]. However, the close-up images by the MASCOT lander showed lumpy boulders but no abundant fine grains [3]. Morota et al. suggested that there would be submillimeter particles on the top of these boulders but not resolved by Hayabusa 2's onboard instruments [4]. Hence, we conducted polarimetry of Ryugu to investigate microscopic grain sizes on its surface. Polarimetry is a powerful tool to estimate physical properties such as albedo and grain size. Especially, it is known that the maximum polarization degree (Pmax) and the geometric albedo (pV) show an empirical relationship depending on surface grain sizes [5]. We observed Ryugu from UT 2020 November 30 to December 10 at large phase angles (ranging from 78.5 to 89.7 degrees) to derive Pmax. We modified TRIPOL (Triple Range Imager and POLarimeter, [6]) to attach to the 1.8-m telescope at the Bohyunsan Optical Astronomy Observatory (BOAO). With this instrument, we observed the asteroid and determined linear polarization degrees at the Rc-band filter. We obtained sufficient data sets from 7 nights at this observatory to determine the Pmax value, and collaborated with other observatories in Japan (i.e., Hokkaido University, Higashi-Hiroshima, and Nishi-Harima) to acquire linear polarization degrees of the asteroid from total 24 nights observations with large phase angle coverage (From 28 to 104 degrees). The observational results have been published in Kuroda et al. (2021) [7]. We thus found the dominance of submillimeter particles on the surface of Ryugu from the comparison with other meteorite samples from the campaign observation. In this presentation, we report our activity to modify the TRIPOL for the 1.8-m telescope and the polarimetric performance. We also examine the rotational variability of the polarization degree using the TRIPOL data.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
• /
• v.44 no.2
• /
• pp.61.3-61.3
• /
• 2019

The epochs of observation for the 28 determinative stars in the Shi Shi Xing Jing and Cheonsang Yeolcha Bunyajido are estimated by using two fitting methods. The coordinate values in these tables were thought to be measured with meridian instruments, and so they have the axis-misalignment errors and random errors. We adopt a Fourier method, and also we devise a least square fitting method. We do bootstrap resamplings to estimate the variance of the epochs. As results, we find that both data sets were made during the 1^st century BCE or the latter period of the Former Han dynasty. The sample mean of the epoch for the SSXJ data is earlier by about 15-20 years than that for the Cheonsang Yeolcha Bunyajido. However, their variances are so large that we cannot decide whether the Shi Shi Xing Jing data was formed around 77 BCE and the Cheonsang Yeolcha Bunyajido was measured in 52 BCE. We need either more data points or data points measured with better precision. We will discuss on the other 120 coordinates of stars listed in the Shi Shi Xing Jing.

• Journal of Power Electronics
• /
• v.9 no.4
• /
• pp.631-642
• /
• 2009

The sun is a useful reference direction because of its brightness relative to other astronomical objects and its relatively small apparent radius as viewed by spacecrafts near the Earth. Most satellites use solar power as a source of energy, and so need to make sure that solar panels are oriented correctly with respect to the sun. Also, some satellites have sensitive instruments that must not be exposed to direct sunlight. For all these reasons, sun sensors are important components in spacecraft attitude determination and control systems. To minimize components and structural mass, some components have multiple purposes. The solar cells will provide power and also be used as coarse sun sensors. A coarse Sun sensor is a low-cost attitude determination sensor suitable for a wide range of space missions. The sensor measures the sun angle in two orthogonal axes. The Sun sensor measures the sun angle in both azimuth and elevation. This paper presents the development of a model to determine the attitude of a small cube-shaped satellite in space relative to the sun's direction. This sensor helps small cube-shaped Pico satellites to perform accurate attitude determination without requiring additional hardware.

• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
• /
• v.33 no.4
• /
• pp.335-344
• /
• 2016

Scientific CubeSat with Instruments for Global Magnetic Fields and Radiations (SIGMA) is a 3-U size CubeSat that will be operated in low earth orbit (LEO). The SIGMA communication system uses a very high frequency (VHF) band for uplink and an ultra high frequency (UHF) band for downlink. Both frequencies belong to an amateur band. The ground station that communicates with SIGMA is located at Kyung Hee Astronomical Observatory (KHAO). For reliable communication, we carried out a laboratory (LAB) test and far-field tests between the CubeSat and a ground station. In the field test, we considered test parameters such as attenuation, antenna deployment, CubeSat body attitude, and Doppler frequency shift in transmitting commands and receiving data. In this paper, we present a communication performance test of SIGMA, a link budget analysis, and a field test process. We also compare the link budget with the field test results of transmitting commands and receiving data.

• Publications of The Korean Astronomical Society
• /
• v.28 no.3
• /
• pp.55-63
• /
• 2013

Gyupyo (圭表, Gnomon) consists of Gyu (圭, Measuring Scale) and Pyo (表, Column), and was one of the traditional astronomical instruments in East Asia. Daegyupyo (Large Gnomon) was manufactured in the Joseon dynasty around 1434 ~ 1435. To increase the measurement accuracy, it was equipped with a Hoengyang (橫梁, Cross-bar) and used a Youngbu (影符, Shadow-Definer) which was invented during the Yuan dynasty (1271 ~ 1368). The cross-bar was installed on the top of the column and this structure was called Eol. In addition, three plumbs hanging from the cross-bar was employed to vertically built Eol on the measuring scale. This method was also used to not only check the vertical of Eol but also diagnose the horizontal of the cross-bar. Throughout this study, we found that a cross-bar in a gnomon has played three important roles; measurement of the shadow length made by the central part of the Sun, increase of the measurement precision using the shadow-definer, and diagnosis of the vertical of Eol and the horizontal of the cross-bar itself using the three plumbs. Hence, it can be evaluated that the employment of a cross-bar and a shadow-definer in a gnomon was a high technology in the contemporary times. In conclusion, we think that this study is helpful for understanding the Large Gnomon of the Joseon dynasty.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
• /
• v.38 no.1
• /
• pp.36.2-36.2
• /
• 2013

The SPICA (SPace Infrared Telescope for Cosmology & Astrophysics) project is a next-generation infrared space telescope optimized for mid- and far-infrared observation with a cryogenically cooled 3m-class telescope. The focal plane instruments onboard SPICA will enable us to resolve many astronomical key issues from the formation and evolution of galaxies to the planetary formation. The FPC-S (Focal Plane Camera - Sciecne) is a near-infrared instrument proposed by Korea as an international collaboration. Owing to the capability of both low-resolution imaging spectroscopy and wide-band imaging with a field of view of $5^{\prime}{\times}5^{\prime}$, it has large throughput as well as high sensitivity for diffuse light compared with JWST. In order to strengthen advantages of the FPC-S, we propose the studies of probing population III stars by the measurement of cosmic near-infrared background radiation and the star formation history at high redshift by the discoveries of active star-forming galaxies. In addition to the major scientific targets, to survey large area opens a new parameter space to investigate the deep Universe. The good survey capability in the parallel imaging mode allows us to study the rare, bright objects such as quasars, bright star-forming galaxies in the early Universe as a way to understand the formation of the first objects in the Universe, and ultra-cool brown dwarfs. Observations in the warm mission will give us a unique chance to detect high-z supernovae, ices in young stellar objects (YSOs) even with low mass, the $3.3{\mu}$ feature of shocked circumstance in supernova remnants. Here, we report the current status of SPICA/FPC project and its extragalactic sciences.