We conducted a survey of open clusters within 1 kpc from the Sun using the astrometric and photometric data of the Gaia Data Release 2. We found 655 cluster candidates by visual inspection of the stellar distributions in proper motion space and spatial distributions in l 􀀀 b space. All of the 655 cluster candidates have a well dened main-sequence except for two candidates if we consider that the main sequence of very young clusters is somewhat broad due to dierential extinction. Cross-matching of our 653 open clusters with known open clusters in various catalogs resulted in 207 new open clusters. We present the physical properties of the newly discovered open clusters. The majority of the newly discovered open clusters are of young to intermediate age and have less than 50 member stars.

We present a sample of 54 disk galaxies which have well developed extraplanar structures. We selected them using visual inspections from the color images of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Since the sizes of the extraplanar structures are comparable to the disks, they are considered as prominent stellar halos rather than large bulges. A single S´ersic profile fitted to the surface brightness along the minor-axis of the disk shows a luminosity excess in the central regions for the majority of sample galaxies. This central excess is considered to be caused by the central bulge component. The mean S´ersic index of the single component model is 1.1 ± 0.9. A double S´ersic profile model that employs n = 1 for the inner region, and varying n for the outer region, provides a better fit than the single S´ersic profile model. For a small fraction of galaxies, a S´ersic profile fitted with n = 4 for the inner region gives similar results. There is a weak tendency of increasing n with increasing luminosity and central velocity dispersion, but there is no dependence on the local background density.

We present the environmental dependence of the luminosity-size relation of galaxies in the local universe (z < 0.01) along with their dependence on galaxy morphology represented by five broad types (E, dEs, S0, Sp, and Irr). The environmental parameters we consider are the local background density and the group/cluster membership together with the clustercenteric distance for the Virgo cluster galaxies. We derive the regression coefficient (β ), i.e., the slope of the line representing the least-squares fitting to the data and the Pearson correlation coefficient (c.c.) representing the goodness of the least-squares fit along with the confidence interval from bootstrap resampling. We find no significant dependence of the luminosity-size relation on galaxy morphology. However, there is a weak dependence of the luminositysize relations on the environment of galaxies, in the sense that galaxies in the low density environment have shallower slopes than galaxies in the high density regions except for elliptical galaxies that show an opposite trend.

The environmental dependence of the morphology of dwarf galaxies in isolated satellite sys- tems is analyzed to understand the origin of the dwarf galaxy morphology using the visually classified morphological types of 5836 local galaxies with z . 0.01. We consider six sub-types of dwarf galaxies, dS0, dE, dEbc, dSph, dEblue, and dI, of which the first four sub-types are considered as early-type and the last two as late-type. The environmental parameters we consider are the projected distance from the host galaxy (rp), local and global background densities, and the host morphology. The spatial distributions of dwarf satellites of early-type galaxies are much different from those of dwarf satellites of late-type galaxies, suggesting the host morphology combined with rp plays a decisive role on the morphology of the dwarf satellite galaxies. The local and global background densities play no significant role on the morphology of dwarfs in the satellite systems hosted by early-type galaxies. However, in the satellite system hosted by late-type galaxies, the global background densities of dE and dSph satellites are significantly different from those of dEbc, dEblue, and dI satellites. The blue-cored dwarf satellites (dEbc) of early-type galaxies are likely to be located at rp > 0.3 Mpc to keep their cold gas from the ram pressure stripping by the hot corona of early-type galaxies. The spatial distribution of dEbc satellites of early-type galaxies and their global background densities suggest that their cold gas is intergalactic material accreted before they fall into the satellite systems.

We determined the warp parameters of 192 warped galaxies which are selected from 340 edge-on galaxies using color images as well as r-band isophotal maps. We derive the local background density (∑ n) to examine the dependence of the warp amplitudes on the galaxy environment. We find a clear trend that strongly warped galaxies are likely to be found in high density regions where tidal interactions are supposed to be frequent. However, the correlation between αω and ∑ n is too weak for weakly warped galaxies (αω < 4◦) and the cumulative distributions of weakly warped galaxies are not significantly different from those of galaxies with no detectable warps. This suggests that tidal interactions do not play a decisive role in the formation of weak warps.

We prepare a catalog of the morphological types of 5840 galaxies within z = 0.01. We determine the morphological types by visual inspection using color images from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) DR7. The majority of the sample galaxies are SDSS spectroscopic target galaxies, but we add  900 galaxies whose redshifts are available in the NASA Extra Galactic Database (NED). The fraction of elliptical and lenticular galaxies is ~ 0.06 while spiral galaxies comprise ~ 30% of the sample with a bar fraction of ~ 0.6. About half of sample are dwarf galaxies of which ~ 35% are dwarf elliptical-like galaxies. There is a strong correlation between the morphological types and luminosities of the galaxies, i.e., high luminosities in the early type galaxies and low luminosity in the late type galaxies. The mean luminosity of dwarf elliptical-like galaxies is similar to that of irregular galaxies.

We analyze the dependence of disk morphology (arm class, Hubble type, bar type) of nearby spiral galaxies on the galaxy environment by using local background density (n), projected distance (rp), and tidal index (T I) as measures of the environment. There is a strong dependence of arm class and Hubble type on the galaxy environment, while the bar type exhibits a weak dependence with a high frequency of SB galaxies in high density regions. Grand design fractions and early-type fractions increase with increasing n, 1/rp, and T I, while fractions of flocculent spirals and late-type spirals decrease. Multiple-arm and intermediate-type spirals exhibit nearly constant fractions with weak trends similar to grand design and early-type spirals. While bar types show only a marginal dependence on n, they show a fairly clear dependence on rp with a high frequency of SB galaxies at small rp. The arm class also exhibits a stronger correlation with rp than n and T I, whereas the Hubble type exhibits similar correlations with n and rp. This suggests that the arm class is mostly affected by the nearest neighbor while the Hubble type is affected by the local densities contributed by neighboring galaxies as well as the nearest neighbor.

We examine the dependence of the morphology of spiral galaxies on the environment using the KIAS Value Added Galaxy Catalog (VAGC) which is derived from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) DR7. Our goal is to understand whether the local environment or global conditions dominate in determining the morphology of spiral galaxies. For the analysis, we conduct a morphological classification of galaxies in 20 X-ray selected Abell clusters up to z~0.06, using SDSS color images and the X-ray data from the Northern ROSAT All-Sky (NORAS) catalog. We analyze the distribution of arm classes along the clustercentric radius as well as that of Hubble types. To segregate the effect of local environment from the global environment, we compare the morphological distribution of galaxies in two X-lay luminosity groups, the low-Lx clusters (Lx < 0.15 X 1044erg/s) and high-Lx clusters (Lx > 1.8 X 1044erg/s). We find that the morphology-clustercentric relation prevails in the cluster environment although there is a brake near the cluster virial radius. The grand design arms comprise about 40% of the cluster spiral galaxies with a weak morphology-clustercentric radius relation for the arm classes, in the sense that flocculent galaxies tend to increase outward, regardless of the X-ray luminosity. From the cumulative radial distribution of cluster galaxies, we found that the low-Lx clusters are fully virialized while the high-Lx clusters are not.

We present a deep CCD imaging in B and V bands which allows us to analyze the vertical structure of NGC 4631. We derive the scale heights of the thin and thick disks at a variety of positions along the major axis of the disk. The scale heights of the thin disk are nearly constant while those of the thick disk tend to increase with increasing galactocentric distance. The mean scale heights of the thin disk derived from B and V images are similar to each other (~ 450 pc). Instead, those of the thick disk show a strong east-west asymmetry which is caused by the diffuse stellar emission that is most prominent in the north west regions above the disk plane. The ratio of scale heights (z_thick/zthin) is about 2.5 in the east side of the disk. However, this ratio is greater than 4 for the thick disk above the disk plane in the west side of the galaxy.