Том 63, № 3 (2019)

The surface gravities and effective temperatures have been added to a compilative catalog published earlier, which includes the relative abundances of several chemical elements for 100 field RR Lyrae stars. These atmoshperic parameters and evolutionary tracks from the Dartmouth database are used to determine the masses of the stars and perform a comparative analysis of the properties of RR Lyrae stars with different chemical compositions. The masses of metal-rich ([Fe/H] > −0.5) RR Lyrae stars with thin disk kinematics are in the range (0.51−0.60)M_⊙. Only stars with initial masses exceeding 1M_⊙ can reach the horizontal branch during the lifetime of this subsystem. To become an RR Lyrae variable, a star must have lost approximately half of its mass during the red-giant phase. The appearance of such young, metal-rich RR Lyrae stars is possibly due to high initial helium abundances of their progenitors. According to the Dartmouth evolutionary tracks for Y = 0.4, a star with an initial mass as low as 0.8 M_⊙ could evolve to become an RR Lyrae variable during this time. Such stars should have lost (0.2−0.3)M_⊙ in the red-giant phase, which seems quite realistic. Populations of red giants and RR Lyrae stars with such high helium abundances have already been discovered in the bulge; some of these could easily be transported to the solar neighborhood as a consequence of perturbations due to inhomogeneities of the Galaxy’s gravitational potential.

Using the example of the pulsar B0525+21, a fundamentally new explanation has been proposed for the abrupt period changes observed in many pulsars, namely the presence of a companion orbiting the pulsar in a highly eccentric orbit. A model is presented describing the behavior of the barycentric timing residuals of B0525+21 in observations with the DSS 13 and DSS 14 radio telescopes of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Jodrell Bank Lovell radio telescope. The proposed model describes the motion of PSR B0525+21 in a binary system with a planetary secondary moving in an elliptical orbit with period P = 27.74 years, semi-major axis a = 10.35 AU, eccentricity e = 0.96, and mass m_c = 0.39M_⊕. The angular velocity of the pericenter motion \(\dot{\omega}=0.67\) rad/period has been measured; the presence of this motion provides evidence for a gas–dust disk or asteroid belt around the pulsar.

A numerical–analytical approach is used to investigate irregular effects in oscillations of the Earth’s pole related to variations in the Chandler and annual components. An approach to studying oscillations in the motion of the Earth’s pole based on a joint analysis of the Chandler and annual components of this motion is proposed. A transformation to a new coordinate system in which the motion of the pole is synchronous with the precession of the lunar orbit can be found in this approach. Estimates of the precision of predictions of the coordinates of the Earth’s pole taking into account additional terms due to lunar perturbations are presented.

Results of experiments on polarized radio sounding of the outer solar corona using the Helios spacecraft from 1975 to 1984 are presented. The characteristic parameters of the temporal spectra of fluctuations in the Faraday rotation of the plane of polarization for heliocentric distances from 3.5 to 5.5 solar radii are obtained. The absolute level of these fluctuations and, consequently, the level of fluctuations of the magnetic field, is almost independent of the solar activity. It is well known that the global structure of the solar wind varies with the solar cycle such that there is slow solar wind at low latitudes and fast solar wind at high latitudes during solar minima. In contrast, a slow solar wind dominates at all latitudes during solar maxima. One explanation for the invariance of the fluctuations observed by sounding the circumsolar plasma is that the mean magnetohydrodynamic turbulence of the low-latitude, slow solar wind depends weakly on the phase of the solar cycle.

Results of studies of the surface-brightness distributions of a group of young stellar objects located within 16″ of the star θ₁ Ori C are presented. Isophotes around each proplyd are constructed using violet, red, and near-infrared images. No regularity in the sizes of the diametral cross sections of the proplyds in the various photometric bands is observed. The measured relative intensities are converted to absolute fluxes, and the absolute luminosities of the brightest parts of the disks and of the disk peripheries are estimated. The ratio of the semi-major to the semi-minor axes of the objects range from 1.5 to 2.5. The maximum lengths of the proplyd tails in various filters range from 300 to 700 AU. They become shorter with decreasing distance from the illuminating star, possibly due to enhanced dissipation of the disk, due to the growth in the role of photovaporization.