The Korean Astronomical Society (KAS) Education & Public Outreach Committee has provided education services for children and school teachers in Cambodia over the past three years from 2016 to 2018. In the first year, 2016, one KAS member visited Pusat to teach astronomy to about 50 children, and in the following two years of 2017 and 2018, three and six KAS members, respectively, executed education workshops for ∼ 20 (per each year) local school teachers in Sisophon. It turned out that it is desirable to include both teaching of astronomical knowledge and making experiments and observations in the education in order for the program to be more effective. Language barrier was the main obstacle in conveying concepts and knowledge, and having a good interpreter was very important. It happens that some languages, such as the Khmer of Cambodia, do not have astronomical terminologies, so that lecturers and even the education participants together are needed to communicate and create appropriate words. Handout hardcopies of the education materials (presentation files, lecture/experiment summaries, terminologies, etc.) are extremely helpful for the participants. Actual performing of assembling and using astronomical telescopes for night sky observations has been lifetime experience for some of the participants, which might promote zeal for knowledge and education. It is hoped that these education services for developing countries like Cambodia can be regularly continued in the future, and further extended to other countries such as Laos and Myanmar.

A focal reducer is developed for CQUEAN (Camera for QUasars in EArly uNiverse), which is a CCD imaging system on the 2.1 m Otto Struve telescope at the McDonald observatory. It allows CQUEAN to secure a wider field of view by reducing the effective focal length by a factor of three. The optical point spread function without seeing effects is designed to be within one pixel (0.28300) over the field of view of 4.82' × 4.82' in optimum wavelength ranges of 0.8 − 1.1 μm. In this paper, we describe and discuss the characteristics of optical design, the lens and barrel fabrications and the alignment processes. The observation results show that the image quality of the focal reducer confirms the expectations from the design.

We have developed a control electronics system for an infrared detector array of KASINICS (KASI Near Infrared Camera System), which is a new ground-based instrument of the Korea Astronomy and Space science Institute (KASI). Equipped with a 512×512 InSb array (ALADDIN III Quadrant, manufactured by Raytheon) sensitive from 1 to 5μm, KASINICS will be used at J, H, Ks, and L-bands. The controller consists of DSP(Digital Signal Processor), Bias, Clock, and Video boards which are installed on a single VME-bus backplane. TMS320C6713DSP, FPGA(Field Programmable Gate Array), and 384-MB SDRAM(Synchronous Dynamic Random Access Memory) are included in the DSP board. DSP board manages entire electronics system, generates digital clock patterns and communicates with a PC using USB 2.0 interface. The clock patterns are downloaded from a PC and stored on the FPGA. UART is used for the communication with peripherals. Video board has 4 channel ADC which converts video signal into 16-bit digital numbers. Two video boards are installed on the controller for ALADDIN array. The Bias board provides 16 dc bias voltages and the Clock board has 15 clock channels. We have also coded a DSP firmware and a test version of control software in C-language. The controller is flexible enough to operate a wide range of IR array and CCD. Operational tests of the controller have been successfully finished using a test ROIC (Read-Out Integrated Circuit).

The reimaging optics of the KASINICS (KASI Near Infrared Camera System) includes many transparent components like an entrance window, band-pass filters, and blocking filters. As observational targets or in-field background objects, bright stars may cause optical ghosts that can significantly degrade the system performance of the KASINICS. We estimated analytically the relative brightness of ghost components with respect to a point source and examined the effects of tilting optical components as a method of suppressing ghosts. We also performed numerical ray tracings including all the optical components and found the results are consistent with those of the analytic estimations. We conclude that the KASINICS will not suffer from significant ghost effects with appropriate anti-reflection coatings and fittings for the optical components.

We have calculated 2448 interstellar cloud models to investigate the formation and destruction of high rotational level H2 according to the combinations of five physical conditions: the input UV intensity, the H2 column density, cloud temperature, total density, and the H2 formation rate efficiency. The models include the populations of all the accessible states of H2 with the rotational quantum number J < 16 as a function of depth through the model clouds, and assume that the abundance of H2 is in a steady state governed primarily by the rate of formation on the grain surfaces and the rates of destruction by spontaneous fluorescent dissociation following absorption in the Lyman and Werner band systems. The high rotational levels J = 4 and J = 5 are both populated by direct formation into these levels of newly created molecules, and by pumping from J = 0 and J = 1, respectively The model results show that the high rotational level ratio N(4)/N(0) is proportional to the incident UV intensity, and is inversely proportional to the H2 molecular fraction, as predicted in theory.

We developed a CCD camera that can observe wide fields on the sky. We tested the field of views using various lenses. For cooling the CCD chip, we used a thermoelectric cooling device and tested the cooling efficiency. This camera will continuously observe a part of the sky. The data from the camera will be used to decide the current weather condition by the real-time star counting program (SCount) which will be developed later.

We have studied the central parts of M82, which is a well-known infrared luminous, starburst galaxy, by analyzing archival data from the Infrared Space Observatory (ISO). M82 was observed at 11 positions covering ±45" from the center along the major axis. We analyzed 4 emission lines, [ArIII] 8.99 μm, H2 17.034 μm, [FeII] 25,98 μm, and [SiII] 34,815 μm from SWSO2 data. The integrated flux distributions of these lines are quite different. The H2 line shows symmetric twin peaks at ~18" from the center, which is a general characteristic of molecular lines in starburst or barred galaxies. This line appears to be associated with the rotating molecular ring at around ~200 pc just outside the inner spiral arm. The relative depletion of the H2 line at the center may be due to the active star formation activity which dissociates the H2 molecules. The other lines have peaks at the center and the distributions are nearly symmetric. The line profiles are deconvolved assuming that both intrinsic and instrumental profiles are Gaussian. The velocity dispersion outside the core is found to be ~50 km s-1. The central velocity dispersion is much higher than 50 km s-1, and different lines give different values. The large central velocity dispersion (σ) is mostly due to the rotation, but there is also evidence for a high σ for [ArIII] line. We also generated position-velocity maps for these four lines. We found very diverse features from these maps.