• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.39 no.2
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• pp.69.2-69.2
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• 2014

We present space-based near-IR (NIR) and optical photometry of globular clusters (GCs) of 16 early-type galaxies in the Fornax and Virgo Clusters. The NIR imaging data for the nearby galaxies was acquired with the IR Channel of the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3/IR) in the F110W ($J_{110}$) and F160W ($H_{160}$) bandpasses. We introduce the full sample of our WFC3/IR program, describe data reductions and photometric measurements including GC candidate selection criteria, and then show selected GCs' color-magnitude diagrams. The tilted features in the diagrams related to the morphological types of host galaxies are discussed in the context of galaxy formation and evolution histories. Combining F475W ($g_{475}$) and F850LP ($z_{850}$) data taken from the Advanced Camera for Surveys Virgo and Fornax Cluster Surveys with our NIR data, we investigate the bimodality in optical-NIR color distribution and the nonlinear feature of the optical-NIR color relation as a function of optical color for these extragalactic GC systems.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.20.2-20.2
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• 2001

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.37 no.2
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• pp.68.2-68.2
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• 2012

We present a discovery of two new globular clusters in the Hubble Space Telescope archive images of the M81 group. They are located much farther from both M81 and M82 in the sky, compared with previously known star clusters in these galaxies. Both clusters show that higher luminosity and larger effective radius than typical globular clusters in Milky Way and M81. Using the available spectroscopic data provided by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, we derive a low metallicity with [Fe/H] ${\approx}$ -2.3 and an old age ~14 Gyr for GC-2. The I-band magnitude of the tip of the RGB for GC-1 is consistent with that of the halo stars in the GC-1 and GC-2 field. However, that of GC-2 is 0.26 mag fainter than its field. It shows that GC-2 is about 400 kpc behind the M81 halo along our line of sight. The deprojected distance to GC-2 from M81 is much larger than any other known globular clusters in the local universe. We discuss the possible scenarios to explain the existence of globular cluster in such an extremely isolated environment.

• Bulletin of the Korean Space Science Society
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• 2008.10a
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• pp.22.4-22.4
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• 2008

The anomalous acceleration of Pioneer-10 and Pioneer-11 is known since 1992. These spacecrafts show the unexplainable acceleration near $10^{-7}\;cm/sec^2$ in the direction to the Sun. Later the unknown acceleration of the same order was found in the motion of Ulysses in its motion from the Jupiter to Mercury, and in the motion of Galileo, NEAR, Cassini, Rosetta, and Messenger at the flybys of these spacecrafts near the Earth. The possibility of unexplainable acceleration near $10^{-7}\;cm/sec^2$ was discussed also for stellar globular clusters and for galaxies. We propose the empirical formula for taking into account this acceleration and overview the predictions of this formula at cosmological scales. Several unknown observational effects are found. One of these effects is the anomalous redshifts in the clusters of galaxies. It was known previously only for small groups of galaxies. We show the existence of anomalous redshifts in the clusters of galaxies using the spectral observations of near one million galaxies from the SLOAN 5th data release.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.46 no.2
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• pp.41.3-42
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• 2021

Coma cluster (Abell 1656) is one of the most massive local galaxy clusters such as Virgo, Fornax, and Perseus, which holds a large collection of globular clusters. Globular cluster systems (GCSs) in a galaxy cluster tell us a history of hierarchical cluster assembly and intracluster GCs (ICGCs) are known to trace the gravitational potential of the galaxy cluster. Previous studies of GCSs in Coma mainly utilized data obtained using Hubble Space Telescope (HST) with high spatial resolution. However, most of the data were based on narrow-field pointing observations. In this study we present the widest survey of GCSs in the Coma cluster using the archival Subaru/Hyper Suprime-Cam (HSC) g and r images, supplemented with the archival HST images. The Coma GCSs are largely extended in E-W and SW direction, along the general direction of Coma-Abell 1367 filament. This global structure of the GCSs is consistent with the spatial distribution of the intracluster light (ICL). ICGC spatial distribution is largely extended to almost ~50% of the virial radius. Most of these ICGCs are blue and metal-poor, which supports the scenario that ICGCs are mainly originated from dwarf galaxies and some proportion from brighter galaxies. Implications of the results will be discussed.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.46 no.1
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• pp.35.2-35.2
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• 2021

Blue straggler stars (BSs) are "rejuvenated" main sequence stars first recognized by Allan Sandage from his observation of the prominent northern globular cluster M3 in the year of 1953. BSs are now known to be present in diverse stellar environments including open clusters, globular clusters, dwarf galaxies, and even the field populations of the Milky Way. This makes them a very useful tool in a wide range of astrophysical applications: Particularly BSs are considered to have a crucial role in the evolution of stellar clusters because they affect on the dynamics, the binary population, and the history of the stellar evolution of the cluster they belong to. Here we report a part of the preliminary results from our ongoing research on the BSs in the two metal-poor globular clusters (GCs) in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), Hodge 11 and NGC1466. Using the high precision multi-band images obtained with the Advanced Camera for Survey (ACS) onboard the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), we extract time-series photometry to search for the signal of periodic variations in the luminosity of the BSs. Our preliminary results confirm that several BSs are intrinsic "short period (0.05 < P < 0.25 days)" variable stars with either pulsating or eclipsing types. We will discuss our investigation on the properties of those variable BS candidates in the context of the formation channels of these exotic main sequence stars, and their roles in the dynamical evolution of the host star clusters.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.39 no.2
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• pp.53.1-53.1
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• 2014

The M81 group is a nearby galaxy group hosted by M81, a twin galaxy of Milky Way. This galaxy group is considered as an ideal laboratory for near-field cosmology to understand mass assembly and evolution of galaxies in the group environment. We designed a project to investigate spectroscopic properties of globular cluster candidates in this group. We obtained spectra of globular cluster candidates using the MMT/Hectospec as a part of the K-GMT Science Program. Our main targets include globular cluster candidates of the M81 group member galaxies and those wandering in the intragroup region. We also observed supernova remnants and some background galaxies. Observing fields covered about 2 square degrees including three main galaxies of the M81 group. Using these spectra, we will identify globular clusters in the M81 group, and investigate their properties including age and metallicity. We will discuss the MMT/Hectospec data reduction processes, and future plan for this project.

• Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.35 no.1
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• pp.9-28
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• 2002

We present UBVI CCD photometry of the stellar contents and globular cluster(GC) candidates in the spiral galaxy NGC 300 in the Sculptor group. Color-magnitude diagrams for 18 OB associations having more than 30 member stars are presented. The slope of the initial mass function for the bright stars in NGC 300 is estimated to be ${\Gamma}= -2.6{\pm} 0.3$. Assuming the distance to NGC 300 of (m - M)o = 26.53 $\pm$ 0.07, the mean absolute magnitude of three brightest blue stars is obtained to be < $M_v^{BSG}$ (3) > = -8.95 mag. We have performed search for GCs in NGC 300 and have found 17 GC candidates in this galaxy. Some characteristics of these GC candidates are discussed.

• Publications of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.30 no.2
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• pp.261-263
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• 2015

The metallicity distribution of globular clusters (GCs) provides a crucial clue for the star formation history of their host galaxy. With the assumption that GCs are generally old, GC colors have been used as a proxy for GC metallicities. Bimodal color distributions of GCs observed in most large galaxies have, for decades, been interpreted as bimodal metallicity distributions, indicating the presence of two populations within a galaxy. However, the conventional view has been challenged by a new theory that non-linear GC color-metallicity relations can cause a bimodal color distribution even from a single-peaked metallicity distribution. Using photometric and spectroscopic data of NGC 5128 GCs in combination with stellar population simulation models, we examine the effect of non-linearity in GC color-metallicity relations on transformation of the color distributions into the metallicity distributions. Although in some colors offsets are present between observations and models for the color-metallicity relations, their overall shape agrees well for various colors. After the offsets are corrected, the observed spectroscopic metallicity distribution is well reproduced via modeled color-metallicity relations from various color distributions having different morphologies. We discuss the implications of our results.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.18
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• pp.27.2-28
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• 1993