In ground-based astronomical spectroscopic observations, there are many telluric absorption lines that are laid on the spectra of celestial objects. To study the physical properties of the celestial objects with these contaminated spectra, the telluric lines should be removed. A conventional method for removing the telluric lines is using the standard stellar spectrum as telluric line. In this paper, we introduce a technique to calculate synthetic telluric spectra and use them to remove telluric lines from a spectrum of a celestial object. We used Line-by-Line Radiative Transfer Model (LBLRTM) for calculating a synthetic spectrum and selected Michelson Interferometer for Passive Atmospheric Sounding (MIPAS) model as atmospheric model. We apply our method to some spectra obtained by Bohyunsan Observatory Echelle Spectrograph (BOES) to show that the telluric lines are well removed from the observed spectra by our model within an accuracy of 2% which is close to the 1-sigma rms of the original spectra.

We report the detection of an exoplanet candidate in orbit around σ Persei from a radial velocity (RV) survey. The system exhibits periodic RV variations of 579.8 ± 2.4 days. The purpose of the survey is to search for low-amplitude and long-period RV variations in giants and examine the origin of the variations using the fiber-fed Bohyunsan Observatory Echelle Spectrograph installed at the 1.8- m telescope of Bohyunsan Optical Astronomy Observatory in Korea. We present high-accuracy RV measurements of σ Per made from December 2003 to January 2014. We argue that the RV variations are not related to the surface inhomogeneities but instead a Keplerian motion of the planetary companion is the most likely explanation. Assuming a stellar mass of 2.25 ± 0.5 M⊙, we obtain a minimum planetary companion mass of 6.5 ± 1.0 MJup, with an orbital semi-major axis of 1.8 ± 0.1 AU, and an eccentricity of 0.3 ± 0.1 around σ Per.

We analyzed the current status of the telescope control system (TCS2) of the 1.8 m telescope in Bohyunsan Optical Astronomy Observatory (BOAO), and suggest a new TCS (TCS3) for the long term development of BOAO. The TCS2 was constructed in 1998 to replace the TCS1 which was installed with the telescope itself at the commencement of BOAO. One of the important parts of TCS is PMAC (Programmable Multi-Axis Controller), which is a general-purpose multi-axis motion controller. PMAC provides the direct interactive communication environment permitting users to command the controller directly with simple operations. This makes the setup, debugging, and diagnostics very easy. The TCS2 was operated stable for a long time, but the hardware and TCS computers have been deteriorated and are out of date now. The new TCS3 needs to be constructed based on a modern computer system. And functions such as pre-calculations of telescope limiting position, interworking with virtual observatory tools, and using GUI, etc should be added. Construction of the TCS3 will be a step creating a better observation environment for the Korean astronomical society.

We present a method to improve the RV (radial velocity) measurements accuracy by using telluric lines. Telluric lines are used to estimate the wavelength scale drift over the detector of the spectrograph. In the case of BOES, the Echelle spectrograph at BOAO (Bohyunsan Optical Astronomical Observatory), the wavelength scale drift can be several hundreds m/s over 24 hours. Due to the wavelength scale drift, the RV measurements accuracy of BOES is limited to several hundreds m/s. By estimating the wavelength scale drift by telluric lines, we can remove its effect to improve the RV measurements accuracy to about 40 m/s.

In an attempt of clarifying the connection between the photospheric abundance anomalies and the stellar rotation as well as of exploring the nature of “normal A” stars, the abundances of seven elements (C, O, Si, Ca, Ti, Fe, and Ba) and the projected rotational velocity for 46 A-type field stars were determined by applying the spectrum-fitting method to the high-dispersion spectral data obtained with BOES at BOAO. We found that the peculiarities (underabundances of C, O, and Ca; an overabundance of Ba) seen in slow rotators efficiently decrease with an increase of rotation, which almost disappear at ve sin i > 100 km s−1. This further suggests that stars with sufficiently large rotational velocity may retain the original composition at the surface without being altered. Considering the subsolar tendency (by several tenths dex below) exhibited by the elemental abundances of such rapidly-rotating (supposedly normal) A stars, we suspect that the gas metallicity may have decreased since our Sun was born, contrary to the common picture of galactic chemical evolution.

To detect exoplanets and study pulsation of K giant stars, we have observed precise RV (radial velocity) of about 55 early K giant (K0 - K4) stars brighter than V = 5 magnitude since 2003 by using BOES, a high resolution Echelle spectrograph attached to the 1.8 m telescope at BOAO (Bohyunsan Optical Astronomy Observatory). We detected periodic RV variation of KO III star β Gem (HD 62509) with a period P=596.6 ± 2.3 days and a semi-amplitude K=44.8 ± 0.7 ms-1 If we adopt 1.7 M⊙ for the mass of β Gem, this yields the minimum mass of the companion m sin i = 2.64 M Jupiter results agree well with Hatzes et al. (2006) and Reffert et al. (2006), and confirm their discovery of a planetary object around β Gem. We also confirmed about 192 minutes short period stellar oscillation found by Hatzes and Zechmeister (2007). This is the first report of exoplanet detection using BOES and demonstrates that the RV observation using BOES is accurate and stable enough to detect exoplanets around bright K giant stars.

In this study we present basic principles and features of RVI2CELL, a precise RV (radial velocity) estimation program to process stellar spectra obtained through iodine cell. RVI2CELL is very robust and fast program. The instrument profile can be modeled as a sum of Gaussian functions or a non-parametric arbitrary shape. The RV accuracy estimated by observation of a RV standard star Tau Ceti indicates about 9 m/s.

We developed a new program for automatic continuum normalization of Echelle spectrographic data. Using this algorithm, we have determined spectral continuum of almost BOES data. The first advantage of this algorithm is that we can save much time for continuum determination and normalization. The second advantage is that the result of this algorithm is very reliable for almost spectral type of spectrum. But this algorithm cannot be applied directly to the spectrum which has very strong and broad emission lines, for example Wolf-Rayet type spectrum. We implanted this algorithm to the program which was developed in the previous study. And we introduced more upgraded BOES data reduction program. This program has more convenient graphical user interface environment, so users can easily reduce BOES data. Lastly, we presented the result of study on line profile variation of magnetic Ap/Bp stars analyzed using this program.

We developed a data reduction program (RX) to process BOES data automatically. It processes a whole set of data taken during one night automatically - preprocessing, extraction to one-dimensional spectra and wavelength calibration. The execution is very fast and the performance looks pretty good. We described the performance of this program, comparing its procedure with that of IRAF. RX does not have functions for continuum normalization yet. We will develop those functions in the next works.