• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.44 no.1
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• pp.47.2-47.2
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• 2019

We present a kinematic study of the two young OB associations Cygnus OB2 and Carina OB1 using the recently released Gaia astrometric data. The unimodal distributions of parallaxes of stars indicate that these associations are real stellar systems, rather than line-of-sight coincidences. The associations are found to comprise dense star clusters and a sparse halo which have different proper motions. Clusters have small spatial sizes with small dispersions in proper motion, while the haloes extending to tens of parsecs have a large dispersion in proper motion. We speculate that this aspect is related to that found in molecular clouds, the so-called "line width-size" relation. In this talk, the formation process of these associations is discussed, based on our findings.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.44 no.1
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• pp.43.2-43.2
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• 2019

In many astrophysical systems, smooth large-scale variations coexist with small-scale fluctuations. For example, a large-scale velocity or density gradient can exist in molecular clouds that have small-scale fluctuations by turbulence. In redshifted 21cm observations, we also have two types of signals - the Galactic foreground emissions that change smoothly and the redshifted 21cm signals that fluctuate fast in frequency space. In many cases, the large-scale variations make it difficult to extract information on small-scale fluctuations. We propose a simple technique to remove smooth large-scale variations. Our technique relies on multi-point structure functions and can obtain the magnitudes of small-scale fluctuations. It can also be used to design filters that can remove large-scale variations and retrieve small-scale data. We discuss how to apply our technique to irregularly spaced data, such as rotation measure observations toward extragalactic radio point sources.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.46 no.1
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• pp.46.2-46.2
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• 2021

Presolar silicon carbide (SiC) grains form around in the envelopes of asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars by satisfying C/O>1 which is an optimal condition for SiC grains to condense in the stellar outflows. Ruthenium (Ru) isotopes are locked into the SiC grains during the condensation of SiC grains. We investigate the isotopic compositions of Ru in the stellar winds by using the NuGrid data, which are obtained by nucleosynthesis calculations during the stellar evolution. We compare the isotopic compositions of Ru obtained from the NuGrid data with measurements and the predictions obtained from different codes. Our results present a piece of evidence that SiC grains in the presolar system came from low-mass and low-metallicity AGB stars, also confirming that they were not from massive stars. We also suggest a new scenario in which the total stellar yields are also considered because SiC grains can condense during the collapse of molecular clouds.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.46 no.1
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• pp.56.1-56.1
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• 2021

Identifying the main source of reionization is one of the essential astrophysical problems that remain to be solved. But there are difficulties in directly measuring the Lyman continuum (LyC) escape fraction (fesc) from high-z galaxies, and other indirect methods have been suggested to identify potential LyC leakers. The O32 ratio ([OIII] λ5007 / [OII] λ3727) is one of those examples, which appear to positively correlate with fesc according to some observations and photoionization modelling of HII regions. However, recent studies fail to find such a correlation. Here we exploit a set of radiation-hydrodynamic simulations of giant molecular clouds to understand the physical connection between O32 and fesc. We post-process our simulations with the photo-ionization code Cloudy, and discuss the results obtained from the runs with different metallicities and input SEDs.

• Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.49 no.6
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• pp.255-259
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• 2016

We estimate the fractal dimension of the ${\rho}$ Ophiuchus Molecular Cloud Complex, associated with star forming regions. We selected a cube (${\upsilon}$, l, b) database, obtained with J = 1-0 transition lines of $^{12}CO$ and $^{13}CO$ at a resolution of 22" using a multibeam receiver system on the 14-m telescope of the Five College Radio Astronomy Observatory. Using a code developed within IRAF, we identified slice-clouds with two threshold temperatures to estimate the fractal dimension. With threshold temperatures of 2.25 K ($3{\sigma}$) and 3.75 K ($5{\sigma}$), the fractal dimension of the target cloud is estimated to be D = 1.52-1.54, where $P{\propto}A^{D/2}$, which is larger than previous results. We suggest that the sampling rate (spatial resolution) of observed data must be an important parameter when estimating the fractal dimension, and that narrower or wider dispersion around an arbitrary fit line and the intercepts at NP = 100 should be checked whether they relate to firms noise level or characteristic structure of the target cloud. This issue could be investigated by analysing several high resolution databases with different quality (low or moderate sensitivity).

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.43 no.1
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• pp.45.1-45.1
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• 2018

Formation of filaments and subsequent dense cores in ISM is one of the essential questions to address in star formation. To investigate this scenario in detail, we recently started a molecular line survey namely 'Filaments, the Universal Nursery of Stars (FUNS)' toward nearby filamentary clouds in Gould Belt using TRAO 14m single dish telescope equipped with a 16 multi-beam array. In the present work, we report the first look results of kinematics of a low mass star forming region L1478 of California molecular cloud. This region is found to be consisting of long filaments with a hub-filament structure. We performed On-The-Fly mapping observations covering ~1.1 square degree area of this region using C18O(1-0) as a low density tracer and 0.13 square degree area using N2H+(1-0) as a high density tracer, respectively. CS (2-1) and SO (32-21) were also used simultaneously to map ~290 square arcminute area of this region. We identified 10 filaments applying Dendrogram technique to C18O data-cube and 13 dense cores using FellWalker and N2H+ data set. Basic physical properties of filaments such as mass, length, width, velocity field, and velocity dispersion are derived. It is found that filaments in L~1478 are velocity coherent and supercritical. Especially the filaments which are highly supercritical are found to have dense cores detected in N2H+. Non-thermal velocity dispersions derived from C18O and N2H+ suggest that most of the dense cores are subsonic or transonic while the surrounding filaments are transonic or supersonic. We concluded that filaments in L~1478 are gravitationally unstable which might collapse to form dense cores and stars. We also suggest that formation mechanism can be different in individual filament depending on its morphology and environment.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.40 no.2
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• pp.31.2-31.2
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• 2015

We present a near-infrared photometric and polarimetric catalog of sources in the $39^{\prime}{\times}69^{\prime}$ fields on the northeastern part of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), which was observed using SIRPOL, an imaging polarimeter of the Infrared Survey Facility (IRSF). This catalog contains 1,858 sources brighter than 14 mag at H band with polarization signal-to-noise ratio greater than 3 in at least one of J, H, and Ks bands. We examined the polarization structures around the star-forming regions, where coherent polarization position angle distributions are seen. We also estimated magnetic field strengths in some selected fields using Chandrasekhar and Fermi analysis. The magnetic field strengths are estimated to be $3{\sim}25{\mu}G$. The wavelength dependence of polarization degrees indicates that the polarization is most likely to be originated from dichroic extinctions by the local interstellar dusts in the LMC. We found that the polarization patterns are well aligned along the molecular clouds around star-forming regions.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.38 no.2
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• pp.65.1-65.1
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• 2013

Our understanding of how brown dwarfs form is limited by observational evidence. We report identification of a L328-IRS as a proto-brown dwarf embedded in an isolated dense molecular core. This source exhibits typical properties of a protostar, however, its luminosity (~0.05 $L{\odot}$) is far below than expected from the least massive protostar by the standard star formation theory. The most likely mass accretion rate (~2.4 10-7 $M{\odot}$ yr-1) inferred from its small bipolar outflow is an order of magnitude less than the canonical value for a protostar. The mass available in its envelope is less than 0.1 $M{\odot}$. These points suggest that L328-IRS will accrete the mass of a brown dwarf, but not that of a star. L328 is found to be fairly well isolated from other nearby clouds and seems to be forming three sub-cores simultaneously through a gravitational fragmentation process. Altogether with these, our direct detection of inward motions in L328 which harbors this proto-brown dwarf clearly supports the idea that a brown dwarf forms like a normal star.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.41 no.2
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• pp.36.1-36.1
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• 2016

This is a presentation of the paper published as Kimm et al. 2016, ApJ, 823, 52. We investigate the formation of metal-poor globular clusters (GCs) at the center of two dark matter halos with $Mhalo{\sim}4{\times}107Msun$ at z>10 using cosmological radiation-hydrodynamics simulations. We find that very compact (${\leq}1$ pc) and massive (${\sim}6{\times}105Msun$) clusters form rapidly when pristine gas collapses isothermally with the aid of efficient $Ly{\alpha}$ emission during the transition from molecular-cooling halos to atomic-cooling halos. Because the local free-fall time of dense star-forming gas is very short (${\ll}1Myr$), a large fraction of the collapsed gas is turned into stars before stellar feedback processes blow out the gas and shut down star formation. Although the early stage of star formation is limited to a small region of the central star-forming disk, we find that the disk quickly fragments due to metal enrichment from supernovae. Sub-clusters formed in the fragmented clouds eventually merge with the main cluster at the center. The simulated clusters closely resemble the local GCs in mass and size but show a metallicity spread that is much wider than found in the local GCs. We discuss a role of pre-enrichment by Pop III and II stars as a potential solution to the latter issue. Although not without shortcomings, it is encouraging that a naive blind (not tuned) cosmological simulation presents a possible channel for the formation of at least some massive GCs.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.41 no.2
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• pp.38.1-38.1
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• 2016

TRAO has been newly equipped with a multi-beam receiver system, 16 pixel MMIC preamplifiers in a $4{\times}4$ array, a FFT spectrometer, and new control computer systems. In our new receiver systems one can make simultaneous observations with two molecular lines maximum 15 GHz apart with a spectral band width of 60 MHz. Typical system temperatures are about 160 - 200 K at 86 ~ 100 KHz and 400 - 500 K at 115 GHz in the dry weather. The new systems using On-The-Fly mode were found to be very efficient in making quick and sensitive maps of large clouds with a high velocity resolution (~0.04 km/s at 100 GHz). TRAO now calls for proposals for 2016 and 2017 observing season for everybody. In the talk we will introduce the current status of TRAO upgrade and its scientific preliminary results.