The International Astronomy Olympiad (IAO) was established by the Euro-Asian Astronomical Society in order to disseminate astronomical knowledge, promote international cooperation in astronomical education area and recognize the importance of astronomy in far-reaching field of science and human culture. The first IAO competition was held at the Special Astrophysical Observatory of the Russian Academy of Sciences located in the north Caucasus of Russia in 1996. Since then, it has been held every year. This paper describes the present status of the IAO main regulations regarding its operation and major results by year, related institutions, and organizations. We created a scientific inquiry framework to analyze past IAO problems in the recognitive aspect in order to measure levels of the scientific knowledges and the scientific thinking abilities. Through this analysis, we can understand the current status of the IAO, and examine the future direction of Korea Astronomy Olympiad. Also, we can make preparation for the IAO competition and the education of delegates.

Infrared color-color diagram of 10 giant molecular clouds are examined to explore the dust property from the COBE Diffuse Infrared Background Experiment of the 100, 140, and 240μm emission. Four of them, Taurus, Mon OB1, Gem OB1, and Chameleon, show the anti-correlation in R100/140−R140/240 plot and the horizontal distribution in R100/240−R140/240 plot, which disagree with those of theoretical calculation. These could be explained by the depletion of 100μm and the excess of 140μm emission, though no existing dust model could support them. Mean color temperature of the anti-correlation region appears to be lower than that of the linear region, whose temperatures are 15.3, 17.0 K, respectively. And the linear region shows large dispersion in the plot of intensity relation. Both imply that a star formation would be more active, but not homogeneous, in the linear region compared to the anti-correlation region.

We collected eleven large astronomical catalogues, which include 2MASS, USNO B1.0, GSC 2 catalogues and so on. Most of these catalogues are the frequently used by astronomers for all sorts of applications. But the researches are faced with the problem of accessing these databases because these catalogues contain from tens millions up to thousands of millions of records. So we developed a web application system to manage these large catalogues, the main purpose of the web application is to allow a powerful and efficient querying activity on these catalogues through internet by using a simple web interface. User could retrieve the query result in variety of formats including plain text, HTML, Microsoft Excel format (XLS), and VOTable. Furthermore, user also could display and analyze result graphically by using a powerful interactive visualization tools named VOPlot which was developed by the Virtual Observatory-India (VOI) project.

The First Generation Digitized Sky Survey (DSS-I) is a collection of digitized photographic atlases of the night sky taken from the Palomar Observatory (northen sky) and the Anglo-Australian Observatory (southern sky). DSS-I is widely used by the astronomical community for a number of applications including object cross-identification and astrometry. However, accessing and retrieving the actual images are nontrivial owing to the huge size (> 60 GB) of the dataset. To facilitate retrieval process of DSS-I data for the public, Korean Astronomical Data Center (KADC) developed a web application that provides not only data retrieval but also visualization functions. The web application consists of several modules developed using Java Applet, Jave Servlet, and JaveServer Pages (JSP) technologies. It allows users to retrieve images efficiently in various formats such as FITS, JPEG, GIF, and TIFF, and also offers an interactive visulization tool, ImgViewer, for displaying/analyzing FITS images. To use the web application, users require a Java-enabled web browser.

We have constructed a database of Korean historical astronomical records. The database contains observational data recorded from BC 2183 to AD 1910. We have also built a webpage for searching through the database based on the following criteria: (1) dynasties (2) astronomical phenomena (3) reigning kings (4) references (5) keywords. Users may select two or more dynasties to search through the database for a certain phenomena, and compare data with those of other dynasties. The queried data can be primarily sorted by one critetion, and secondarily sorted by another, each in ascending or descending order. The search results give dates both in Solar and Lunisolar calendars, years and dates in Sexagenary cycle, dynasties, reigning kings, astronomical phenomena, and references. The database and webpage were constructed under the research project of the Korean Astronomical Data Center (KADC, http://kadc.kao.re.kr) in Korea Astronomy Observatory (KAO).

As a core project of the Korean Astronomical Data Center (KADC) in Korea Astronomy Observatory (KAO), we have constructed a framework of astronomical database using MySQL and JSP. MySQL database server is a powerful open source database management system, and JSP technology provides a simplified, fast way to create dynamic web content. Combined together, MySQL and JSP enable us to develop server-independent web-based applications efficiently in a short amount of time. The MySQL tables and JSP programs embedded in our database are built/written in a way to benefit both users and managers. We plan to expand our database by supplementing additional data in the near future. Our newly constructed database is expected to be the prototype of the Korean Virtual Observatory (KVO).

A high performance computing cluster for astronomical computations has been built at Korea Astronomy Observatory. The 64 node cluster interconnected with Gigabit Ethernet is composed of 128 Intel Xeon processors, 160 GB memory, 6 TB global storage space, and an LTO (Linear Tape-Open) tape library. The cluster was installed and has been managed with the Open Source Cluster Application Resource (OSCAR) framework. Its performance for parallel computations was measured with a three-dimensional hydrodynamic code and showed quite a good scalability as the number of computational cells increases. The cluster has already been utilized for several computational research projects, some of which resulted in a few publications, even though its full operation time is less than one year. As a major resource of the K∗Grid testbed, the cluster has been used for Grid computations, too.

Korean Astronomical Data Center (KADC, http://kadc.kao.re.kr) in Korea Astronomy Observatory (KAO) has constructed an archive of Bohyunsan Optical Astronomy Observatory (BOAO) 1.8m telescope data. The archive is consisted of photometric (1KCCD, 2KCCD) and spectroscopic data of 400GB amount for the period of 1997 to 2002,and the first web service is made of the data from 1997 to 2001. In the search page, primary search criterion of object name or coordinates is used. Users can also refine the search criteria using parameters such as observation date, observer(s), data type, and/or instrument. The data identified from the search can be uploaded to the FTP site for further downloading in FITS format. This archive is the first DB of astronomical data made in Korea.

A large scale 13CO(J=1-0) survey was made for CMa OB1/R1 region in 220° ≤ l 230° and -10° ≤ b ≤ 10° with a 8' spacing by using the 4 m radio telescope of Nagoya University. 34 isolated clouds were identified in this survey. Among them, two clouds were firstly identified by us. The observed LSR velocity indicate that almost of the all clouds are located in the Local arm, except two extreme velocity. The mass spectrum of the clouds in the Local arm is best fitted by a power-law index of 1.6.