Vol 44, No 10 (2018)

Being the largest gravitationally bound structures in the Universe, galaxy clusters are huge reservoirs of photons generated by the bremsstrahlung of a hot cluster gas. We consider the absorption of high-energy photons from distant cosmological gamma-ray sources by the bremsstrahlung of galaxy clusters. The magnitude of this effect is the third in order of smallness after the effects of absorption by the cosmic microwave background and absorption by the extragalactic background light. Our calculations of the effect of absorption by the bremsstrahlung of galaxy clusters have shown that this effect manifests itself in the energy range ~1–100 GeV and can be τ ~ 10⁻⁵ in optical depth.

We present the results of our study of the X-ray spectrum for the source X-6 in the nearby galaxy M33 obtained for the first time at energies above 10 keV from the data of the NuSTAR orbital telescope. The archival Swift–XRT data for energy coverage below 3 keV have been used, which has allowed the spectrum of M33 X-6 to be constructed in the wide energy range 0.3–20 keV. The spectrum of the source is well described by the model of an optically and geometrically thick accretion disk with a maximum temperature of ~2 keV and an inner radius of ~5 cos^−1/2θ km (where >θ is the unknown disk inclination angle with respect to the observer). There is also evidence for the presence of an additional hard component in the spectrum. The X-ray luminosity ofM33 X-6 measured for the first time in the wide energy range 0.3–20 keV is ~2 × 10³⁸ erg s⁻¹, with the luminosity in the hard 10–20 keV X-ray band being ~10% of the source’s total luminosity. The results obtained suggest that X-6 may be a Z-source, i.e., an X-ray binary with subcritical accretion onto a weakly magnetized neutron star.

The grid of evolutionary tracks of population II stars with initial masses 0.81 M_⊙ ≤ M_ZAMS ≤ 0.85 M_⊙ and chemical composition of the globular cluster M3 is computed. Selected models of horizontal branch stars were used as initial conditions for solution of the equations of radiation hydrodynamics and time–dependent convection describing radial stellar oscillations. The boundaries of the instability strip on the Herztsprung–Russel diagram were determined using ≈100 hydrodynamic models of RR Lyr pulsating variables. For each evolutionary track crossing the instability strip the pulsation period was determined as a function of evolutinary time. The rate of period change of most variables is shown to range within −0.02 ≤ \(\dot{\Pi}\) ≤ 0.05 day/10⁶ yr. Theoretical estimate of the mean period change rate obtained by the population synthesis method is 〈\(\dot{\Pi}\)〉 = 6.0 × 10⁻³ day/10⁶ yr and agrees well with observations of RR Lyr variables of the globular cluster M3.

The velocity field of main-sequence stars and red giants from the TGAS catalogue with heliocentric distances up to 1.5 kpc has been analyzed for various spectral types. To estimate the influence of a low accuracy of stellar parallax measurements on the results of a kinematic analysis of distant stars, first we have studied in detail how the kinematic parameters derived with 1/π distances are shifted when these distances are replaced by three other versions of distances from Astraatmadja et al. (2016b). We have obtained detailed tables in which the ranges of these shifts in the Ogorodnikov–Milne and Bottlinger model parameters are shown for the stars of each spectral type. We have the smallest shifts in the case of determining the Oort coefficients A and B, for which there are 10% shifts only for main-sequence stars of spectral type B. In the remaining cases, these shifts are 0–3%. For the remaining parameters the shifts do not exceed 30%. Thus, we have shown that using the 1/π distance scale in estimating the Ogorodnikov–Milne and Bottlingermodel parameters (except for the parameter Ω″₀) yields reliable results even when using parallaxes with large relative errors (up to 60%). To study Parenago’s discontinuity, we have investigated the dependence of the Ogorodnikov–Milne and Bottlinger model parameters on color for 1 260 071 mainsequence stars and 534 387 red giants. As far as we know, such a data set is used for the first time to investigate Parenago’s discontinuity. The main result is the detection of maximum points at B − V = 0.75 after which the solar velocity component V and the Oort coefficient B decrease when moving from blue stars to red ones. This fact is a new feature of Parenago’s discontinuity, because the component V does not change in the classical case at B − V >0.6. We have made an attempt to represent the well-known Parenago’s discontinuity as a special case of the more complex effect of a gradual change in a number of kinematic parameters as the mean age and composition of the group of stars under study changes.