We present a new catalog of AGB stars based on infrared two-color diagrams (2CDs) and known properties of the pulsations and spectra. We exclude some misclassified objects from previous catalogs. We identify color areas in two IR 2CDs where most O-rich and C-rich objects listed in previous catalogs of AGB stars are found. By collecting new objects in these color selection areas in the two IR 2CDs, we find candidate objects for AGB stars. By using the color selection method, we identify 3996 new objects in the O-rich areas, 1487 new objects in the C-rich areas, and 295 new objects in the overlap areas of the two 2CDs simultaneously. We have found that 470 O-rich and 9 C-rich objects are Mira variables with positive spectral identification and they are newly identified AGB stars. We present a new catalog of 3828 O-rich AGB stars and 1168 C-rich AGB stars excluding misclassified objects and adding newly identified objects.

A silicate carbon star is a carbon star which shows circumstellar silicate dust features. We col- lect a sample of 44 silicate carbon stars from the literature and investigate the validity of the classification. For some objects, it is uncertain whether the central star is a carbon star. We confirm that 29 objects are verified silicate carbon stars. We classify the confirmed objects into three subclasses based on the evolution phase of the central star. To investigate the effect of the chemical transition phase from O to C, we use the radiative transfer models for the detached silicate dust shells. The spectral energy distributions and the infrared two-color diagrams of the silicate carbon stars are compared with the theoretical model results. For the chemical transition model without considering the effect of a disk, we find that the life time of the silicate feature is about 50 to 400 years depending on the initial dust optical depth.

Many observations have found evidence of the presence of a large number of heavily obscured Active Galactic Nuclei (AGNs). However, the nature of this population is only poorly understood because heavy obscuration by dust prevents one from finding them at optical wavelengths. Mid-infrared AGN searches can overcome this obstacle by penetrating through dust and by detecting direct emission from the dust torus. Thus, we can identify most of the AGN population, including type-2 and buried AGNs. Using the AKARI mid-infrared all-sky survey, we performed an AGN search in the nearby universe. Utilizing the 2MASS photometry, we selected mid-infrared-excess sources and carried out near-infrared spectroscopic observations in the AKARI Phase 3. During these follow-up observations, we have found three galaxies that show strong near-infrared red continuum from hot dust with a temperature of about 500 K, but do not show any AGN features in other wavelengths. The most suitable explanation of near-infrared continuum is the presence of central AGNs. Therefore, we conclude that they are AGNs obscured by dust. We performed X-ray observations of the two galaxies with SUZAKU. No detections in the 0.4-10 keV suggest that the column density may be much higher than NH=1023.5cm−2 . Comparing the masses of the host galaxies with those of the SDSS AGNs, we find that the host galaxies of the dusty AGNs discovered with AKARI are less massive populations than those of optically selected AGNs.

We observed an area of 10 d e g 2 of the Large Magellanic Cloud using the Infrared Camera (IRC) onboard AKARI. The observations were carried out using five imaging filters (3, 7, 11, 15, and 24 μm ) and the prism disperser ( 2 − 5 μm , λ/Δλ ∼ 20 ) equipped in the IRC. This paper presents an outline of the survey project and also describes very briefly the newly compiled near- to mid-infrared point source catalog. The 10σ limiting magnitudes are 17.9, 13.8, 12.4, 9.9, and 8.6 mag at 3.2, 7, 11, 15 and 24 μm , respectively. The photometric accuracy is estimated to be about 0.1 mag at 3.2 μm and 0.06 - 0.07 mag in the other bands. The position accuracy is 0.3" at 3.2, 7 and 11 μm and 1.0" at 15 and 24 μm . The sensitivities at 3.2, 7, and 24 μm are roughly comparable to those of the Spitzer SAGE LMC point source catalog, while the AKARI catalog provides the data at 11 and 15 μm , covering the near- to mid-infrared spectral range continuously.

We present a photometric catalog of infrared (IR) sources based on the North Ecliptic Pole Wide field (NEP-Wide) survey of AKARI, which covered a 5.4 deg 2 circular area centered on NEP. The catalog contains about 115,000 sources detected at the 9 IRC filter bands, comprehensively covering a wavelength range from 2 to 24 μm . This is a band-merged catalog including all of the photometry results from the supplementary optical data as well as the IRC bands. To validate a source at a given IRC band, we searched for counterparts in the other bands. The band-merging was done based on this cross-matching of the sources among the filter bands. The NIR sources without any counterpart in any other bands are finally excluded to avoid false objects.

A sample of 145 JHK-2MASS observations of NGC open star clusters is studied, of which 132 have never been studied before. Twelve are classified as non-open clusters and 13 are re-estimated self-consistently, after applying the same methods in order to compare and calibrate our reduction procedures. The fundamental and structural parameters of the 120 new open clusters studied here are derived using color-magnitude diagrams of JHK Near-IR photometry with the fitting of solar metallicity isochrones. We provide here, for the first time, a catalog of the main parameters for these 120 open clusters, namely, diameter, distance, reddening and age.

We present the Korea Institute for Advanced Study Value-Added Galaxy Catalog (KIAS VAGC), a catalog of galaxies based on the Large Scale Structure (LSS) sample of New York University Value-Added Galaxy Catalog (NYU VAGC) Data Release 7. Our catalog supplements redshifts of 10,497 galaxies with 10 < rP ≤ 17.6 (1455 with 10 < rP ≤ 14.5) to the NYU VAGC LSS sample. Redshifts from various existing catalogs such as the Updated Zwicky Catalog, the IRAS Point Source Catalog Redshift Survey, the Third Reference Catalogue of Bright Galaxies, and the Two Degree Field Galaxy Redshift Survey have been put into the NYU VAGC photometric catalog. Our supplementation significantly improves spectroscopic completeness: the area covered by the spectroscopic sample with completeness higher than 95% increases from 2.119 to 1.737 sr. Our catalog also provides morphological types of all galaxies that are determined by the automated morphology classification scheme of Park & Choi (2005), and related parameters, together with fundamental photometry parameters supplied by the NYU VAGC. Our catalog contains matches to objects in the Max Planck for Astronomy (MPA) & Johns Hopkins University (JHU) spectrum measurements (Data Release 7). This new catalog, the KIAS VAGC, is complementary to the NYU VAGC and MPA-JHU catalog.