• Publications of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.30 no.2
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• pp.679-682
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• 2015

The Hiroshima Astrophysical Science Center (HASC) was founded in 2004 at Hiroshima University, Japan. The main mission of this institute is the observational study of various transient objects including gamma-ray bursts, supernovae, novae, cataclysmic variables, and active galactic nuclei by means of multi-wavelength observations. HASC consists of three divisions; the optical-infrared astronomy division, high-energy astronomy division, and theoretical astronomy division. HASC is operating the 1.5m optical-infrared telescope Kanata, which is dedicated to follow-up and monitoring observations of transient objects. The high-energy division is the key operation center for the Fermi gamma-ray space telescope. HASC and the high-energy astronomy group in the department of physical science at Hiroshima University are closely collaborating with each other to promote multi-wavelength time-domain astronomy. We report the recent activities of HASC and some science topics pursued by this multi-wavelength collaboration.

• Publications of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.30 no.2
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• pp.255-259
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• 2015

Recent narrow-band Ca photometry discovered two distinct red giant branch (RGB) populations in some massive globular clusters (GCs) including M22, NGC 1851, and NGC 288. In order to investigate the differences in light/heavy elements abundances between the two subpopulations, we have performed low-resolution spectroscopy for stars on the two RGBs in these GCs. We find a significant difference (more than $4{\sigma}$) in calcium abundance from the spectroscopic HK' index for both M22 and NGC 1851. We also find a more than $8{\sigma}$ difference in CN band strength between the Ca-strong and Ca-weak subpopulations. For NGC 288, however, we detect the presence of a large difference only in the CN strength. The calcium abundances of the two subpopulations in this GC are identical within errors. We also find interesting differences in CN-CH relations among these GCs. While CN and CH indices are correlated in M22, they show an anti-correlation in NGC 288. However, NGC 1851 shows no difference in CH between two groups of stars having different CN strengths. The CN bimodality in these GCs could be explained by pollution from intermediate-mass asymptotic giant branch stars and/or fast-rotating massive stars. For the presence or absence of calcium bimodality and the differences in CN-CH relations, we suggest these would be best explained by how strongly type II supernovae enrichment has contributed to the chemical evolutions of these GCs.

• Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.52 no.5
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• pp.181-205
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• 2019

There is evidence that the luminosities of Type Ia supernova (SN Ia) depend on their environments. While the impact of this trend on estimating cosmological parameters is widely acknowledged, the origin of this correlation is still under debate. In order to explore this problem, we first construct the YONSEI (YOnsei Nearby Supernova Evolution Investigation) SN catalog. The catalog consists of 1231 spectroscopically confirmed SNe Ia over a wide redshift range (0.01 < z < 1.37) from various SN surveys and includes light-curve fit data from two independent light-curve fitters, SALT2 and MLCS2k2. For a sample of 674 host galaxies, we use the stellar mass and the star formation rate data in Kim et al. (2018). We find that SNe Ia in low-mass and star-forming host galaxies are $0.062{\pm}0.009mag$ and $0.057{\pm}0.010mag$ fainter than those in high-mass and passive hosts, after light-curve corrections with SALT2 and MLCS2k2, respectively. When only local environments of SNe Ia (e.g., locally star-forming and locally passive) are considered, this luminosity difference increases to $0.081{\pm}0.018mag$ for SALT2 and $0.072{\pm}0.018mag$ for MLCS2k2. Considering the significant difference in the mean stellar population age between the two environments, this result suggests that the luminosity evolution of SNe Ia with redshift is most likely the origin of the environmental dependence.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.46 no.2
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• pp.53.4-54
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• 2021

Although the era of very large telescopes has come, small telescopes still have advantages for fast follow-up and long-term monitoring observation. Intensive monitoring survey of nearby galaxies (IMSNG) aims to understand the nature of the supernovae (SNe) by catching the early light curve from them with the network of small telescopes from 0.4-m to 1.0-m all around the world. To achieve the scientific goals with heterogeneous facilities, three factors are important. First, automatic processes as soon as data is uploaded will increase efficiency and shorten the time. Second, searching for transients is necessary to deal with newly emerged transients for fast follow-up observation. Finally, the Integrated process for different telescopes gives a homogeneous output, which will eventually make connections with the database easy. Here, we introduce the integrated pipeline, 'gppy' based on Python, for more than 10 facilities having various configurations and its performance. Processes consist of image pre-process, photometry, image align, image combine, photometry, and transient search. In the connected database, homogeneous output is summarized and analyzed additionally to filter transient candidates with light curves. This talk will suggest the future work to improve the performance and usability on the other projects, gravitational wave electromagnetic wave counterpart in Korea Observatory (GECKO), and small telescope network of Korea (SOMANGNET).

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.46 no.2
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• pp.50.3-51
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• 2021

The progenitor of Type Ia supernovae is largely expected as a close binary system of a carbon/oxygen white dwarf (WD) primary and its secondary non-degenerate (single degenerate; SD) or degenerate companion (double degenerate; DD). Here we present a high-cadence monitoring observation of SN 2021hpr in a spiral galaxy, NGC 3147. SN 2021hpr shows typical characteristics as a normal type Ia supernova from its photometric (Δm₁₅(B)=1.01±0.03, dust free M_B,max=-19.45±0.02) and spectroscopic data. To investigate its progenitor system, we fit the early part of BVRI-band light curve simultaneously with a combined version of ejecta-companion and simple power-law model. As a result, we found a significant feature of an early excess possibly from a 7.63±0.52R_⊙-sized companion at the optimal viewing angle while the fit is not successful at the common viewing angle. No possible red sources brighter than F555W=-7.01 AB mag is detected at the SN location in Hubble Space Telescope (HST) pre-explosion images, excluding massive stars with initial mass of >16M_⊙ as companions. We suggest the progenitor system of SN 2021hpr can be a fairly large companion such as a main sequence, a low mass subgiant, and a helium giant star. In addition, a possibility of the ejecta-Disk Originated Matter (DOM) interaction for the DD scenario considering linearly-rising early flux still remains.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.46 no.1
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• pp.55.2-56
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• 2021

The progenitor of Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) is mainly believed to be a close binary system of acarbon-oxygen white dwarf (CO WD) and non-degenerate companion (single degenerate) or another WD (double degenerate). However, it is unclear which system is more prevalent. Here, we present a high cadence optical/Near-IR light curve of normal but slightly faint type Ia SN 2019ein from IMSNG project. We fit the early light curve (t <+8.3 days from the first detection) with various models to find the shock-heated cooling emission from SN ejecta-companion interaction. No significant shock-heated cooling emission is found, from which we constrain the progenitor star size as the following. The upper limit (R_upper,*) of the companion size in R-band is ~0.2R_⊙ when forcing the first light time (t_fl) to have one value and ~0.9R_⊙ when using the mean value of tfl from the fitting in each band. Assuming the source of the I-band curve is almost powered from the radioactive decay, we obtained R_upper,*~1.2R_⊙. The early B-V color curve is in agreement with the model color curve of the 2M_⊙ main sequence companion. These results allow us to at least rule out large stars like red giants as a companion star of the binary progenitor system of this supernova. B-R and V-R color do not show any significant signs of a red bump, which shows a thin helium shell (MHe<0.1M_⊙) for the sub-Mch WD (double detonation model). In addition, we estimated the distance to NGC 5353 as 37.098±0.028Mpc.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.44 no.2
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• pp.48.4-48.4
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• 2019

We studied the metal-distribution of isolated Milky-way mass galaxy using various hydrodynamic solvers and investigated the difference of the result between AMR and SPH codes. In particle-based codes, physical quantities like mass or metallicity defined in each particle are conserved unless being injected explicitly by the effect of the supernova, whereas in the Eulerian codes the diffusion is simply accomplished by hydro-equation. Therefore, without including explicit physics of diffusion on the SPH- codes, the metal mixing in the galaxy or CGM only can be accomplished by the direct motion of the particles, however, the standard-SPH codes depress the instability of the turbulent fluid mixing. In this work, we simulated under common initial conditions, common gas-physics like cooling-heating models, and star-formation feedback using ENZO(AMR) GIZMO and GADGET-2 codes. We additionally included a metal-diffusion algorithm on the SPH-codes, which follows the subgrid-turbulent mixing model investigated by Shen et al. (2010) and compared the effect of the metal-outflow on the halo region of the galaxy in different hydro-solvers. We also found that for the implementation of the diffusion scheme in the SPH-codes, the existence of a sufficient number of the gas-particles, which is the carrier of the metals, is necessary. So we tested a new initial condition for proper implementation of the diffusion scheme on the SPH simulations. By comparing the metal-contamination of the circumgalactic medium with different hydrodynamics models, we quantify the diffusion strength of AMR codes using diffusion parameterization of the SPH codes and also suggest the calibration solutions in the different behavior of codes in metal-outflow.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.45 no.1
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• pp.36.1-36.1
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• 2020

The progenitor of Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) is mainly believed to be a carbon/oxygen white dwarf (WD) with non-degenerate (single degenerate) or another WD companion (double degenerate). However, there is little observational evidence of their progenitor system. Recent studies suggest that shock-breakout cooling emission after the explosion can constrain the size of the progenitor system. To do so, we obtained a optical/Near-IR light curve of SN 2019ein, a normal but slightly sub-luminous type Ia supernova, from the very early phase using our high-cadence observation of Intensive Monitoring Survey of Nearby Galaxies (IMSNG). Assuming the expanding fireball model, the simple power-law fitting of the early part of the light curve gives power indices of 1.91 (B) and 2.09 (R) implying radioactive decay of 56Ni is the dominant energy source. By comparison with the expected light curve of the cooling emission, the early observation provides us an upper limit of the companion size of R∗≤1R⊙. This result suggests that we can exclude a large companion such as red giants, which is consistent with the previous study.

• Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.52 no.1
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• pp.11-21
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• 2019

Intensive Monitoring Survey of Nearby Galaxies (IMSNG) is a high cadence observation program monitoring nearby galaxies with high probabilities of hosting supernovae (SNe). IMSNG aims to constrain the SN explosion mechanism by inferring sizes of SN progenitor systems through the detection of the shock-heated emission that lasts less than a few days after the SN explosion. To catch the signal, IMSNG utilizes a network of 0.5-m to 1-m class telescopes around the world and monitors the images of 60 nearby galaxies at distances D < 50 Mpc to a cadence as short as a few hours. The target galaxies are bright in near-ultraviolet (NUV) with $M_{NUV}$ < -18.4 AB mag and have high probabilities of hosting SNe ($0.06SN\;yr^{-1}$ per galaxy). With this strategy, we expect to detect the early light curves of 3.4 SNe per year to a depth of R ~ 19.5 mag, enabling us to detect the shock-heated emission from a progenitor star with a radius as small as $0.1R_{\odot}$. The accumulated data will be also useful for studying faint features around the target galaxies and other science projects. So far, 18 SNe have occurred in our target fields (16 in IMSNG galaxies) over 5 years, confirming our SN rate estimate of $0.06SN\;yr^{-1}$ per galaxy.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.38 no.2
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• pp.68.1-68.1
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• 2013

Infrared Medium-Deep Survey is a near-infrared imaging survey geared toward understanding the formation and the evolution of quasars and galaxies at high redshift, and studying transient and time-variable objects such as gamma-ray bursts, supernovae, and young stellar objects. The survey uses a multi-tier structure, with deep imaging survey of 100 $deg^2$ using UKIRT to the depth of 23 AB mag, and a shallower imaging of interesting sources using the CQUEAN camera on the 2.1m telescope at McDonald observatory. This talk will give an overview of the survey strategy, the instrument development, and science highlights. The science highlights will include the discovery of high redshift quasars, high redshift galaxy clusters, GRBs, and other interesting sources. At the end of the talk, we will also present the future prospects of our study.