• Publications of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.91-99
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• 2010

An increasing number of observations have confirmed the presence of multiple stellar populations in Galactic globular clusters. Multiple populations evidence come from the complex chemical pattern of stars hosted in GCs and from the split or broadening of different evolutionary sequences in the color-magnitude diagrams. Multiple stellar populations have been identified in Galactic and Magellanic Cloud clusters, as well as in external galaxies. In this paper I will summarize the observational facts.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.35 no.2
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• pp.26-26
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• 2010

Gravitationally bound objects in the universe have been a main target of astronomers for long. However, some objects in the universe may want to be free, as we do. Recently we are witnessing the existence of some globular clusters wandering in the nearby universe. The nature and origin of these wandering globular clusters are not yet known. With the advent of giant telescopes they will be an excellent tool for various fields of research including first stars, star clusters, galaxies, and galaxy clusters.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.19
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• pp.12.2-12.2
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• 1994

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.39 no.1
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• pp.45.2-45.2
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• 2014

We carry out the first survey for globular clusters (GCs) of three galaxies in cosmic voids using Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Advanced Camera for Survey archival F606W and F814W images. While all sample galaxies are classified as early-type galaxies based on ground-based imaging, the high resolution HST images reveal that they are actually spiral galaxies. We identify the point sources with red colors typical for GCs as GC candidates in the color-magnitude diagrams. As a result, we find a significant number of GC candidates. The spatial and radial distribution of GCs show central concentration on each galaxy region. Their mean colors are similar to that of the Milky Way and M31 GCs. The void GCs are somewhat bluer by, and than cluster and field GCs in early-type galaxies with similar luminosity to our samples, but the discrepancy is not significant. We also estimate the specific frequencies of GCs in these galaxies and the values are consistent with those in field and cluster galaxies with similar luminosity. From these results, we suggest that the formation process of void GCs is similar to that of GCs in other environments. The further implications will be discussed.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.38 no.2
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• pp.76-76
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• 2013

The current hierarchical model of galaxy formation predicts that galaxy halos contain merger relics in the form of long stellar streams. In order to find stellar substructures in galaxy, we focused our investigation on the stellar spatial density around globular clusters and on the quantitative properties of the evolved sequences in the color-magnitude diagrams (CMDs). First, we investigated the spatial configuration of stars around five metal-poor globular clusters in halo region (M15, M30, M53, NGC 5053, and NGC 5466) and one metal-poor globular cluster in bulge region (NGC 6626). Our findings indicate that all of these globular clusters show strong evidence of extratidal features in the form of extended tidal tails around the clusters. The orientations of the extratidal features show the signatures of tidal tails tracing the clusters' orbits and the effects of dynamical interactions with the galaxy. These features were also confirmed by the radial surface density profiles and azimuthal number density profiles. Our results suggest that these six globular clusters are potentially associated with the satellite galaxies merged into the Milky Way. Second, we derived the morphological parameters of the red giant branch (RGB) from the near-infrared CMDs of 12 metal-poor globular clusters in the Galactic bulge. The photometric RGB shape indices such as colors at fixed magnitudes, magnitudes at fixed colors, and the RGB slope were measured for each cluster. The magnitudes of the RGB bump and tip were also estimated. The derived RGB parameters were used to examine the overall behavior of the RGB morphology as a function of cluster metallicity. The behavior of the RGB shape parameters was also compared with the previous observational calibration relation and theoretical predictions of the Yonsei-Yale isochrones. Our results of studies for stellar spatial distribution around globular clusters and the morphological properties of RGB stars in globular clusters could add further observational evidence of merging scenario of galaxy formation.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.38 no.2
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• pp.36-36
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• 2013

Globular clusters (GCs) are among the oldest stellar objects in the universe and provide valuable constraints on many aspects of galaxy evolution. GC systems typically exhibit bimodal color distributions the phenomenon of which has been a major topic in the area of GC research. GC color bimodality established a paradigm where scenarios to explain its origin require two GC groups with different formation origins. The GC division, asserted mainly by photometric color bimodality so far, has been viewed as the presence of two distinct metallicity subgroups within individual galaxies. In this study, we make use of spectroscopy of GC systems associated with two giant galaxies, M31 (the Andromeda) and M87 (NGC 4486), to investigate the GC bimodality and the underlying metallicity distributions. Recent spectroscopy on the globular cluster (GC) system of M31 with unprecedented precision witnessed a clear bimodality in absorption-line index distributions of old GCs. Given that spectroscopy is a more detailed probe into stellar population than photometry; the discovery of index bimodality may point to the very existence of dual GC populations. However, here we show that the observed spectroscopic dichotomy of M31 GCs emerges due to the nonlinear nature of metallicity-to-index conversion and thus one does not necessarily have to invoke two separate GC subsystems. We present spectra of 130 old globular clusters (GCs) associated with the Virgo giant elliptical galaxy M87, obtained using the Multi-Object Spectrography (MOS) mode of Faint Object Camera and Spectrograph (FOCAS) on the Subaru telescope. M87 GCs with reliable metallicity measurements exhibit significant inflection along the color-metallicity relations, through which observed color bimodality is reproduced from a broad, unimodal metallicity distribution. Our findings lend further support to this new interpretation of the GC color bimodality, which could change much of the current thought on the formation of GC systems and their host galaxies.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.38 no.2
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• pp.73.2-73.2
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• 2013

In the current ${\Lambda}CDM$ hierarchical merging paradigm, a galaxy like the Milky Way formed by numerous mergers of ancient subsystems. Most of the relics of these building blocks, however, are yet to be discovered or identified. Recent progress in the Milky Way globular cluster research is throwing new light on this perspective. The discoveries of multiple stellar populations having different heavy element abundances in some massive globular clusters are suggesting that they are most likely the remaining cores or relics of disrupted dwarf galaxies. In this talk, we will report our progress in the (1) narrow-band photometry, (2) low-resolution spectroscopy, and (3) population modeling for this growing group of peculiar globular clusters.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.40 no.2
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• pp.33.1-33.1
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• 2015

M85 is a nearby merger remnant galaxy located at the northern part of the Virgo Cluster. Because of its remarkable merging features, it is an interesting object to investigate its formation history. Globular clusters are a great tracer of the formation history of early-type galaxies, so that we study the globular cluster system of M85. It has been already found that there are "intermediate-color" globular clusters as well as blue and red ones based on the photometric survey using CFHT/Megacam. For follow-up research, we obtain the spectra of 21 globular clusters in the central region of M85 using Gemini-N/GMOS. We estimate their ages and metallicities based on the strength of Lick indices. We detect the intermediate-age population (~ 2 Gyr) with solar metallicities, comprising about 50% of the observed globular clusters, as well as old and metal-poor population. It suggests that M85 experienced a major merging event around 2 Gyr ago. We discuss these results regarding to the formation history of M85.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.38 no.1
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• pp.57.2-57.2
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• 2013

Based on N-body simulations, we find out that significant fraction of dynamically formed BH-BH (10 $M_{\odot}$ and NS-NS (1.4 $M_{\odot$ ecah) binaries are ejected from globular clusters. About 30 percent of compact stars are ejected in the form of binary. The merging time of ejected binary depends on the velocity dispersion of globular cluster. Some of ejected binaries have merging time-scales shorter than Hubble time and are expected to produce gravitational waves that can be detectable by the advanced ground-based interferometers. The merger rates of ejected BH-BH and NS-NS binaries per globular cluster are estimated to be 3.5 and 17 per Gyr, respectively. Assuming the spatial density of globular clusters as 8.4 $h^3$ clusters $Mpc^{-3}$ and extrapolating to the horizon distance of the advanced LIGO-Virgo network, we expect the detection rates solely attributed to BH-BH and NS-NS with cluster origin are to be 42 and 1.7 $yr^{-1}$, respectively. Besides, we find out that BH-NS binary ejection hardly occurs in globular clusters and dynamically formed compact binaries may possibly be the source of short GRBs whose locations are far from host galaxies.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.37 no.1
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• pp.49.1-49.1
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• 2012

Recently it is found that the globular clusters are not only bound in their host galaxies, but also are wandering between galaxies in Virgo and Coma clusters. The cluster-wide distribution of these intracluster globular clusters (IGCs) suggests that IGCs are an important probe to understand hierarchical structure formation. We present a survey of IGCs in Virgo cluster using HST archive images for four HST/ACS fields located from about 9 arcmin to 40 acrmin from the cluster center. We find ten new IGCs and confirm four previously known IGCs. The number density of IGCs decreases as the distance from the cluster center increases. We derive integrated photometry of IGCs. We also obtain photometry of resolved stars in the outer region of each cluster. These IGCs are fainter than $M_V{\approx}-9.5$ and mostly blue in (V-I) color. showing that they are mostly metal poor. The locations of red giant branch stars of IGCs in color-magnitude diagrams also show that they are meal-poor. We discuss the implications of these results.