We present near-infrared light curves of HBC 722 after its the September 2010 outburst. We have been monitoring its near-infrared light curves since November 2010 with Korean Astronomy and Space Science Institute Infrared Camera System (KASINICS). HBC 722 exhibits large changes in optical and near-infrared brightness since its outburst. The J, H, and Ks light curves over about 2.5 years show that in all observed bands HBC 722 progressively became fainter until around April 2011, down to J ~10.7, H ~9.9, Ks ~9.3, but it is getting brighter again. Large scatter in the obtained light curve prevents us from finding whether there is any short timescale variation as reported in other optical observations. The near-infrared color of HBC 722 is becoming bluer since its outburst. The pre-outburst Spectral Energy Distribution (SED) of HBC 722 is consistent with that of a slightly reddened Class II YSO with the exception of the extraordinary IR-excess in the far-infrared region.

A number of middle and high school students are selected at the Korea Astronomy Olympiad (KAO) in every year. In the first stage of the selection, the resume, school transcript, and recommendation letters from teachers are referred. In the second stage, after video lectures and weekend observation classes, students are tested with on-line homeworks, and interviewed through internet. For 118 students who have gone through the second stage of the 2012 KAO, we have conducted a questionnaire survey, which asks the students the motivation and preparation for the KAO. The survey has also included inquiries for the selection process and education program of the 2012 KAO; the replies will be used as feedbacks for the next year's KAO. The survey has revealed that the first stage worked well, while the second stage needs to be improved in terms of fairness and objectivity. We have found that most students received private tutorings for the KAO, so we suggest efforts should be made for students to be able to prepare the KAO without receiving private tutorings.

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 have carried out a follow-up study on the students who have participated or are going to participate in either the International Astronomy Olympiad (IAO), the Asia Pacific Astronomy Olympiad (APAO) or the International Olympiad on Astronomy and Astrophysics (IOAA) from 2002 to 2011. The survey questionnaires returned from ten high school students including five who are to participate in 2011 as well as fourteen college students have been analyzed in various aspects of their backgrounds and personal characteristics. In family life, their parents tend to have high educational background along with high expectations for their children. In regard to the academic environment, most students express a general satisfaction in school life, including their relationship with teachers and classmates. In personal characteristics, they describe themselves as inquisitive, perseverant, competitive, creative, self-motivated and goal-oriented, in addition to many other traits. Most students have a strong interest in astronomy which usually begins in middle schools through exposure to astronomy books. On top of it, the astronomy olympiad has provided them with an opportunity to strengthen their self-esteem, problem-solving ability and conviction about scientific careers. Accordingly, the experience in astronomy olympiad has led a considerable number of students to continuously studying in astronomy related fields or otherwise in other science and engineering areas. In conclusion, the astronomy olympiad plays such an important role that it can make a significant contribution to astronomy as well as science in general by having positive impact on the potential career path of its participants.

The International Olympiad on Astronomy and Astrophysics (IOAA) initiated by the Thailand Astronomical Society in 2007 is an annual competition for high school students. One of its aim is to enhance the development of international exchange in the field of school education in astronomy and astrophysics. This paper first provides the overview of the IOAA in terms of key regulations based on its statutes, history and current status. Secondly, the published syllabus of the IOAA is used for content analysis according to subject areas regarding the exam questions of the IOAA in theoretical, observational and data analysis parts from 2007 to 2010. Also, a scientific inquiry framework is applied to the same questions for assessment based on scientific inquiry in the cognitive aspect with two sub-classes of scientific knowledge and scientific reasoning. Among a dozen astronomy subject areas listed on the syllabus, the theoretical part of the IOAA makes more frequent use of the Sun, the solar system, properties of stars, and concept of time. In content knowledge, a factor of scientific knowledge, the IOAA questions, especially in the theoretical part have a lesser degree in difficulty than the IAO (International Astronomy Olympiad) exam questions for the same period whose degree in difficulty is comparable to college level. With regard to scientific reasoning, the IOAA questions tend to involve convergent rather than divergent thinking. Lastly, in light of these findings, discussions are given on the outcome of Korean participation in the previous IOAAs and ways to help better in preparing Korean students for future astronomy Olympiads.

A diagnostic tool has been proposed to convert the observed surface distribution of hydrogen recombination line intensities into the radial distributions of the electron temperature and the density in HII regions. The observed line intensity is given by an integral of the volume emission coefficient along the line of sight, which comprises the Abel type integral equation for the volume emission coefficient. As the emission coefficient at a position is determined by the temperature and density of electrons at the position, the local emission coefficient resulted from the solution of the Abel equation gives the radial distribution of the temperature and the density. A test has been done on the feasibility of our diagnostic approach to probing of HII regions. From model calculations of an HII region of pure hydrogen, we have theoretically generated the observed surface brightness of hydrogen recombination line intensities and analyzed them by our diagnostic tool. The resulting temperatures and densities are then compared with the model values. For this case of uniform density, errors in the derived density are not large at all the positions. For the electron temperature, however, the largest errors appear at the central part of the HII region. The errors in the derived temperature decrease with the radial distance, and become negligible in the outer part of the model HII region.

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.

Many departments in the governmental organization including Ministry of Science & Technology (MOST) allocate some of their budget into research and development in astronomy and space science. We identify the research projects related to astronomy and space science that were funded by the government during fiscal years 2004-2005. Then the distribution of budgets of those projects is analyzed according to several classification schemes and characteristics in order to find out the status and trends of the investment in this field. Five departments had conducted more than 190 projects related to astronomy and space science, which accounted for 7.3% of the government R&D budget in space and aeronautics area. As for most fields of basic science, MOST and Ministry of Education & Human Resources Development invested the most of budget in astronomy related projects. We briefly discuss the implications of this study.

The Korean Astronomical Data Center(KADC) in Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute(KASI) has developed a database of astronomical journals published by the Korean Astronomical Society and the Korean Space Science Society. It consists of all bibliographic records of the Journal of the Korean Astronomical Society(JKAS), Publication of the Korean Astronomical Society(PKAS), and Journal of Astronomy & Space Sciences(JASS). The KADC provides useful search functions in the search page such as search criterion of bibcode, publication date, author names, title words, or abstract words. The journal name is one of the search criterion in which more than one journal can be designated at the same time. The criterion of author name is provided bilingually: English or Korean. The abstract and full text can be downloaded as PDF files. It is also possible to search papers related to a specific research topic published in Korean astronomical journals, provided by the KADC, which often cannot be found the worldwide, Astrophysics Data System(ADS) services. The KADC will become basic infrastructure for the systematic construction of bibliographic records, and hence, make the society of Korean astronomers more interactive and collaborative.

An archiving system designed to enable documenting database of astronomical images, with functions of search and download, is being developed by Korean Astronomical Data Center(KADC) of Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute(KASI). The system consists of three PCs for web server, database server, and system management server. The search program for the web environment is operated in the web server. In the management server, several utility program we developed are installed: input program for the database, program for transfer from fits to jpg files, program for data recovery and management, and programs for statistics and connect management. The collected data would be sorted out by the system manager to input into the database. The online input is possible in an observatory where the data is produced. We applied the content management system(CMS) module for the database management. On the basic of CMS module, we set up a management system for the whole life cycle of metadata from creation and collection to storage and deletion of the data. For the search function, we employed a technique to extract indices from the metadata. In addition, MySQL is adopted for DBMS. We currently display about 2,700 and 25,000 photographs for astronomical phenomena and astronomical objects on the data, respectively.

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).

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.