We study the manufacturers of the astronomical instruments invented as part of the so-called Ganui-Dae (astronomical platform) project in the reign of King Sejong (1418-1450) of the Joseon dynasty. The main purpose of this project was to compile the Chiljeongsan-Naepyeon, a Korean calendar, that lasted for 5.5 years from 1432 to 1438. Through this project, a total of 17 astronomical instruments such as the armillary sphere, celestial globe, and auto-striking clepsydra were developed. It is generally known that most of them were manufactured by Lee Cheon (李蕆, 1376-1451) and Jang Yeong-Sil (蔣英實, fl. 1423-1442). In this study, we investigate the accounts of the Veritable Records of King Sejong, Munjong, and Sejo, focusing on the inscription written out to memorize the completion of the Ganui-Dae project. We found that at least 12 persons took part in manufacturing the astronomical instruments of the Ganui-Dae project. Lee Cheon was involved in the production of four instruments, while Jang Yeong-Sil was involved in two; therefore, it seems that the achievement of Jang Yeong-Sil was overestimated. We also found that Jeong Cho (鄭招, ?-1434) was a scientist and Lee Cheon was an engineer in the early phase of the Ganui-Dae project, while King Sejong and Yi Sun-Ji (李純之, 1406-1465) played major role in the late phase. According to our study, King Sejong and Yi Sun-Ji were involved in the production of at least seven and five instruments, respectively. In conclusion, we believe that this study will be helpful to understand the practical manufacturers of the astronomical instruments invented during the Ganui-Dae project in the Joseon dynasty.
We have designed data processing server system to include data archiving, photometric processing and light curve analysis for KMTNet (Korea Microlensing Telescope Network). Outputs of each process are reported to the main photometric database, which manages the whole processing steps and archives the photometric results. The database is developed using ORACLE 11g Release 2 engine. It allows to select objects applying any set of criteria such as RA/DEC coordinate and Star ID, etc. We tested the performance of the database using the OGLE photometric data. The searching time for querying 70,000,000 records was under 1 second. The database is fully accessed using query forms via web page.
An alt-azimuth type mount system, developed at the Space Science and Technology Laboratory, Kyung Hee University, has been found to experience some difficulties in monitoring of the artificial space objects. Since the telescope installed on the alt-azimuth mount does not rotate on the same axis as the earth does, this mount system needs an instrument rotator to correct the field rotation. Although there are some commercial instrument rotators already in the market, those are not suitable for our system due to their low interchangeability. In this study, we have designed a new high speed instrument rotator and calculated the deformation of new designed system using structural analyses.