• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.279-288
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• 2010

To study properties of the pulsation in the infrared emission for long period variables, we have collected and analyzed the infrared observational data at M band for 12 OH/IR stars. We present the light curves using the data that cover about 30 years including recent observations of ISO and Spitzer. We use Marquardt-Levenberg algorithm to determine the pulsation periods and amplitudes and compare them with previous results of infrared and radio investigations. Generally, the newly determined pulsation parameters show much less errors because of the larger database. We find that the relationship between the pulsation period and amplitudes at M band is fairly well fitted with a simple linear equation in a wide period range. For OH 42.3-0.1, we find some evidences that the object could be a post-asymptotic giant branch star.

• Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.49 no.4
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• pp.127-136
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• 2016

We investigate optical properties of amorphous alumina (Al2O3) dust grains in the envelopes around O-rich asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars using laboratory measured optical data. We derive the optical constants of amorphous alumina over a wide wavelength range that satisfy the Kramers-Kronig relation and reproduce the laboratory data. Using the amorphous alumina and silicate dust, we compare the radiative transfer model results with the observed spectral energy distributions. Comparing the theoretical models with observations on various IR two-color diagrams for a large sample of O-rich AGB stars, we find that the amorphous alumina dust (about 10-40%) mixed with amorphous silicate better models the observed points for the O-rich AGB stars with thin dust envelopes.

• Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.44 no.5
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• pp.195-200
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• 2011

We have revisited the ACS Virgo Cluster Survey (ACSVCS), a Hubble Space Telescope program to obtain ACS/WFC g and z bands imaging for a sample of 100 early-type galaxies in the Virgo Cluster. In this study, we examine 51 nucleated early-type galaxies in the ACSVCS in order to look into the relationship between the photometric and structural properties of stellar nuclei and their host galaxies. We morphologically dissect galaxies into five classes. We note that (1) the stellar nuclei of dwarf early-type galaxies (dS0, dE, and dE,N) are generally fainter and bluer with g > 18.95 and (g-z) < 1.40 compared to some brighter and redder counterparts of the ellipticals (E) and lenticular galaxies (S0), (2) the g-band half-light radii of stellar nuclei of all dwarf early-type galaxies (dS0, dE, and dE,N) are smaller than 20 pc and their average is about 4 pc, and (3) the colors of red stellar nuclei with (g - z) > 1.40 in bright ellipticals and lenticular galaxies are bluer than their host galaxies colors. We also show that most of the unusually "red" stellar nuclei with (g-z) > 1.54 in the ACSVCS are the central parts of bright ellipticals and lenticular galaxies. Furthermore, we present multi photometric band color - color plots that can be used to break the age-metallicity degeneracy particularly by inclusion of the thermally pulsing-asymptotic giant branch (TP-AGB) phases of stellar evolution in the stellar population models.

• Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.50 no.6
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• pp.157-165
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• 2017

$H_2O$ maser emission at 22 GHz in the circumstellar envelope is one of the good tracers of detailed physics and kinematics in the mass loss process of asymptotic giant branch stars. Long-term monitoring of an $H_2O$ maser spectrum with high time resolution enables us to clarify acceleration processes of the expanding shell in the stellar atmosphere. We monitored the $H_2O$ maser emission of the semi-regular variable R Crt with the Kagoshima 6-m telescope, and obtained a large data set of over 180 maser spectra over a period of 1.3 years with an observational span of a few days. Using an automatic peak detection method based on least-squares fitting, we exhaustively detected peaks as significant velocity components with the radial velocity on a $0.1kms^{-1}$ scale. This analysis result shows that the radial velocity of red-shifted and blue-shifted components exhibits a change between acceleration and deceleration on the time scale of a few hundred days. These velocity variations are likely to correlate with intensity variations, in particular during flaring state of $H_2O$ masers. It seems reasonable to consider that the velocity variation of the maser source is caused by shock propagation in the envelope due to stellar pulsation. However, it is difficult to explain the relationship between the velocity variation and the intensity variation only from shock propagation effects. We found that a time delay of the integrated maser intensity with respect to the optical light curve is about 150 days.