• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.43 no.2
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• pp.40.1-40.1
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• 2018

Among Type I supernovae, which show no evidence for hydrogen lines in spectra, Type Ib/c supernovae lack of strong Si absorption lines and are involved with massive progenitors. While strong helium absorption lines are present in Type Ib supernovae, narrow helium emission lines also can appear in some Type Ib that are often called Type Ibn supernovae (SNe Ibn). We consider helium giant stars as a promising progenitor candidate for SN Ibn and suggest the evolutionary scenario through binary systems using MESA code. In our models the range of primary mass is 11 - 20 solar mass, mass ratio is 0.5 - 0.9, and initial period is 1.5 / 1.7 / 2.0 / 2.5 / 3.0 day. In particular, we find that the evolution of the secondary star can overtake the primary through mass transfer from the secondary to the primary, which is so-called 'reverse case B' mass transfer. In such systems the secondary star may undergo a supernova explosion earlier than the primary star. In this case, the primary star evolves towards a single helium giant to become a SN Ibn progenitor. These cases are more frequent in relatively low initial primary mass.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.46 no.1
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• pp.27.4-28
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• 2021

Since the first direct detection of the gravitational waves in 2015, more than 50 events coming from the merging of compact binaries composed of black holes and neutron stars have been observed. The simultaneous detection of gravitational waves and electromagnetics waves from the merging of neutron stars opened up multi-messenger astronomy. The forthcoming observations with better sensitivity by the network of ground based detectors will enrich the gravitational wave source populations and provide valuable information regarding stellar evolution, dynamics of dense stellar systems, and star formation history across the cosmic time. The precision of the Hubble constant from the distance measurement of gravitational sources will improve with more binary neutron star events are observed together with the aftweglows. I will also briefly cover the expected scientiic outcomes from the future detectors that are sensitive to much lower frequenies than current detectors.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.46 no.2
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• pp.80.2-80.2
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• 2021

Galactic young massive clusters are the ideal laboratories to study massive stellar evolution. Unfortunately, such objects are rare. Of particular interest are so-called Red Supergiant Clusters (RSGCs) that are currently only found toward the Scutum-Crux Galactic arm. Confirming their nature as RSGC is often not straight-fortward as distinguishing RSGs from AGB stars is still difficult even with high spectral resolution spectra. Here we report that broad band colors using 2MASS JHK and GAIA G band data can be useful in reducing the AGB contamination, thus providing selection criteria that effectively reveal the known RSGCs with negligible false positives. On the other hand, we suggest that RSGC4, one of the proposed RSGC candidates, may not be a cluster of RSGs as their colors are not compatible with our selection criteria. We discuss the nature of these stars together with our IGRINS spectroscopic observations. We also employ the same selection criteria to search for RSGC candidates in other parts of the plane, resulting in no prominent candidates.

• Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.56 no.1
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• pp.41-57
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• 2023

We measured temporal and emission properties of quiescent magnetars using archival Chandra and XMM-Newton data, produced a list of the properties for 17 magnetars, and revisited previously suggested correlations between the properties. Our studies carried out with a larger sample, better spectral characterizations, and more thorough analyses not only confirmed previously-suggested correlations but also found new ones. The observed correlations differ from those seen in other neutron-star populations but generally accord with magnetar models. Specifically, the trends of the intriguing correlations of blackbody luminosity (L_BB) with the spin-inferred dipole magnetic field strength (B_S) and characteristic age (τ_c) were measured to be L_BB ∝ B^1.5_S and L_BB ∝ τ^-0.6_c, supporting the twisted magnetosphere and magnetothermal evolution models for magnetars. We report the analysis results and discuss our findings in the context of magnetar models.

• Publications of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.32 no.1
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• pp.87-91
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• 2017

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are considered to be carriers of the unidentified infrared bands, which are ubiquitously observed in the Universe. PAHs are mainly formed around evolved carbon-rich stars and injected into interstellar space. Planetary nebulae (PNe), a late stage of low- and intermediate stellar mass evolution, are suitable objects to investigate the formation and evolution of PAHs. The shortest PAH feature is located in $3.3{\mu}m$, which is important to examine the excitation and size distribution of PAHs. While the number of samples had been limited before, the high sensitivity of AKARI /IRC has drastically increased the number of samples. We obtained the $2-5{\mu}m$ spectra of Galactic PNe with AKARI /IRC and compiled a near-infrared spectral catalog, containing 73 PNe. We investigate the detection rate and the evolution of the PAH features. The characteristics of the catalog are illustrated and the origin of the evolution of the PAH features is discussed.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.39 no.2
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• pp.47.1-47.1
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• 2014

The calcium infrared triplet (CaT) is one of the prominent absorption features in the infrared wavelength regime. Recently, this absorption feature has been getting attention in the prediction of metallicity of stellar populations because of its strong sensitivity to the calcium abundance and metallicity of a star. However, we find that measuring metallicity directly from CaT is very dangerous because the formation mechanism of CaT is very inefficient in the cool stars which are abundant in metal-rich populations. This characteristics of CaT make the CaT-metallicity relation to converge around ~ $8{\AA}$ in the metal-rich regime. Our results suggest that, because of the converging CaT-metallicity relation in the metal-rich regime, the metallicity of simple stellar populations greater than [Fe/H]~-0.5 is unreliable when the linear conversion between CaT and metallicity is applied to derive metallicity. Based on these results, we suggest that CaT is not a good metallicity indicator for the metal-rich stellar populations.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.41 no.1
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• pp.67.3-68
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• 2016

We present evidence of the bar driven secular evolution on disks from z~0.8 to z~0.01. Using $3.6{\mu}m$ images of nearby galaxies from the Spitzer Survey of Stellar Structure in Galaxies (S4G) and images from the Cosmological Evolution Survey (COSMOS), we find that barred galaxies show a light deficit in the disk surrounding the bar within the bar radius. We quantify this light deficit and find that galaxies with a stronger bar (longer, higher Bar/T) show a more pronounced light deficit. We examine snapshots from N-body simulations and confirm that as a barred galaxy evolves, the bar becomes longer and the light deficit becomes more pronounced. Theoretical studies have predicted that bars evolve by capturing nearby disk stars and employing them to make the bar more elongated and stronger. Therefore the light deficit in the disk is likely produced by bars, and thus bars play a major role in shaping their host galaxies, redistributing not only the gaseous but also the stellar mass within galaxies, with important consequences to their subsequent evolution.

• Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.46 no.3
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• pp.103-123
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• 2013

Star clusters are superb astrophysical laboratories containing cospatial and coeval samples of stars with similar chemical composition. We initiate the Sejong Open cluster Survey (SOS) - a project dedicated to providing homogeneous photometry of a large number of open clusters in the SAAO Johnson-Cousins' UBV I system. To achieve our main goal, we pay much attention to the observation of standard stars in order to reproduce the SAAO standard system. Many of our targets are relatively small sparse clusters that escaped previous observations. As clusters are considered building blocks of the Galactic disk, their physical properties such as the initial mass function, the pattern of mass segregation, etc. give valuable information on the formation and evolution of the Galactic disk. The spatial distribution of young open clusters will be used to revise the local spiral arm structure of the Galaxy. In addition, the homogeneous data can also be used to test stellar evolutionary theory, especially concerning rare massive stars. In this paper we present the target selection criteria, the observational strategy for accurate photometry, and the adopted calibrations for data analysis such as color-color relations, zero-age main sequence relations, Sp - MV relations, Sp - $T_{eff}$ relations, Sp - color relations, and $T_{eff}$ - BC relations. Finally we provide some data analysis such as the determination of the reddening law, the membership selection criteria, and distance determination.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.36 no.2
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• pp.143.1-143.1
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• 2011

Deep Ca,b,y images obtained from the CTIO 4m Blaco telescope are used to investigate the multiple stellar populations of red giant branch (RGB) and sub-giant branch (SGB) in Galactic globular clusters NGC 6656 and NGC 6723. For NGC 6656, confirming the result of Lee et al. (2009), we find two discrete populations of the RGB stars of which mean color separation is about 0.2 mag in hk[=(Ca-b)-(b-y)] index. Furthermore, we also find the bimodel distribution of the SGB stars in (hk, y) color-magnitude diagram. A new finding is that the (hk, y) color-magnitude diagram of NGC 6723 shows two distinct RGB stars with different calcium abundances of which mean color separation is about 0.12 mag in hk index. This multiple stellar feature has not been observed in previous observation, suggesting that NGC 6723 may also be a possible relic of dwarf galaxies that merged into the Milky Way in the past. Thus our result adds further constraints to the merging scenario of the Galaxy formation. Unfortunately, the split of SGB stars in NGC 6723 is not obvious. We will present some statistical results to compare properties of two populations in two clusters.

• Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.36 no.3
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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.