Blue large-amplitude pulsators (BLAPs) are a recently discovered class of short-period pulsating variable stars. In this work, we present new information on these stars based on photometric and spectroscopic data obtained for known and new objects detected by the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment (OGLE) survey. BLAPs are evolved objects with pulsation periods in the range of 3-75 minutes, stretching between subdwarf B-type stars and upper main-sequence stars in the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram. In general, BLAPs are single-mode stars pulsating in the fundamental radial mode. Their phase-folded light curves are typically sawtooth-shaped, but many longer-period objects exhibit an additional bump. The long-term OGLE observations show that the period change rates of BLAPs are usually of the order of 10-7 yr-1 and in a quarter of the sample are negative. The spectroscopic data indicate that BLAPs form a homogeneous group in the period, surface gravity, and effective temperature spaces. However, we observe a split into two groups in terms of helium-to-hydrogen content. The atmospheres of He-enriched BLAPs are more abundant in metals (about 5 times) than the atmosphere of the Sun. We discover that BLAPs obey a period-gravity relationship and we use the distance to OGLE-BLAP-009 to derive a period-luminosity relation. Most of the stars observed in the OGLE Galactic bulge fields seem to reside in the bulge, while the remaining objects likely are in the foreground Galactic disk.

We report the discovery of the classical Cepheid OGLE-GD-CEP-1884 (= GDS_J1535467-555656) with the longest pulsation period known in our Galaxy. The period of 78.14 d is nearly 10 d longer than that of the previous record-holding Cepheid, S Vulpeculae, and thus, OGLE-GD-CEP-1884 can be categorized as the first ultra long period Cepheid in the Milky Way. This star is present in the ASAS-SN and Gaia DR3 catalogs of variable stars, but it has been classified as a long-period variable in those catalogs. Based on more than 10 years of the photometric monitoring of this star carried out by the OGLE project in the I and V bands and a radial velocity curve from the Gaia Focused Product Release, we unequivocally demonstrate that this object is a fundamental-mode classical Cepheid. By employing the mid-infrared period-luminosity relation, we determine the distance to OGLE-GD-CEP-1884 (4.47 +- 0.34 kpc) and place it on the Milky Way map, along with about 2400 other classical Cepheids. We also discuss the potential of finding additional ultra long period Cepheids in our Galaxy.

Stellar rotation, a key factor influencing stellar structure and evolution, also drives magnetic activity, which is manifested as spots or flares on stellar surface. Here, we present a collection of 18 443 rotating variables located toward the Galactic bulge, identified in the photometric database of the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment (OGLE) project. These stars exhibit distinct magnetic activity, including starspots and flares. With this collection, we provide long-term, time-series photometry in Cousins I- and Johnson V-band obtained by OGLE since 1997, and basic observational parameters, i.e., equatorial coordinates, rotation periods, mean brightness, and brightness amplitudes in both bands. This is a unique dataset for studying stellar magnetic activity, including activity cycles.

In this work, we search the OGLE-IV outer Galactic bulge fields for short-period variable objects. The investigation focuses on unexplored timescales roughly below one hour in an area containing about 700 million stellar sources down to I approximate to 20 mag. We concentrate mainly on Blue Large-Amplitude Pulsators (BLAPs), which represent a recently discovered enigmatic class of shortperiod hot subluminous stars. We find 33 BLAPs in the period range from 7.5 min to 66.5 min. Thirty-one of them are new discoveries, which increases the number of known stars of this class to over one hundred. Additional eighteen objects with pulsation-like light curve shapes and periods ranging from 17.3 min to 53.7 min are presented. Very likely, these are delta Sct/SX Phe-type stars, but some of them could be pulsating hot subdwarfs or BLAPs. We also report on the detection of five eclipsing binary systems with orbital periods between 61.2 min and 121.9 min and three mysterious variable objects with I-band amplitudes larger than 0.9 mag. A spectroscopic follow-up would help in the final classification of the variables.

Blue Large-Amplitude Pulsators (BLAPs) form a mysterious class of variable stars with typical periods of tens of minutes and amplitudes above 0.1 mag. In this work, we present results of a variability search focused on timescales shorter than 1 h, conducted in OGLE-IV Galactic disk fields containing about 1.1 billion stellar sources down to I$\approx$20 mag. Twenty-five BLAPs have been detected, 20 of which are new discoveries. Their periods range from 8.4 min to 62.1 min. We have also found six new eclipsing binary systems with orbital periods from 38.3 min to 121.3 min and five short-period large-amplitude (> 0.17 mag in the I-band) variable stars of unknown type.

We present the OGLE collection of delta Scuti stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud and in its foreground. Our dataset encompasses a total of 15 256 objects, constituting the largest sample of extragalactic delta Sct stars published so far. In the case of 12 delta Sct pulsators, we detected additional eclipsing or ellipsoidal variations in their light curves. These are the first known candidates for binary systems containing delta Sct components beyond the Milky Way. We provide observational parameters for all variables, including pulsation periods, mean magnitudes, amplitudes, and Fourier coefficients, as well as long-term light curves in the I- and V-bands collected during the fourth phase of the OGLE project. We construct the period-luminosity (PL) diagram, in which fundamental-mode and first-overtone delta Sct stars form two nearly parallel ridges. The latter ridge is an extension of the PL relation obeyed by first-overtone classical Cepheids. The slopes of the PL relations for delta Sct variables are steeper than those for classical Cepheids, indicating that the continuous PL relation for first-overtone delta Sct variables and Cepheids is non-linear, exhibiting a break at a period of approximately 0.5 d. We also report the enhancement of the OGLE collection of Cepheids and RR Lyr stars with newly identified and reclassified objects, including pulsators contained in the recently published Gaia DR3 catalog of variable stars. As a by-product, we estimate the contamination rate in the Gaia DR3 catalogs of Cepheids and RR Lyr variables.

We present the first-ever collection of delta Scuti stars found over the entire area of the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC). The sample consists of 2810 variables of which over 2600 objects belong to the SMC while the remaining stars are most likely members of the Milky Way's halo. The sample has been divided into 2733 singlemode and 77 multimode pulsators. We provide observational parameters (pulsation periods, mean magnitudes, amplitudes, Fourier coefficients) of all delta Sct stars and the long-term I- and V-band time-series photometric measurements collected during the fourth phase of the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment (OGLE-IV).

We report the classification of 24 puzzling short-period variable stars located in OGLE-IV Galactic bulge fields. The stars are low-amplitude (<0.05 mag) multi-periodic objects with dominant periods between 22 and 54 min whose type could not have been unambiguously established based on photometry only. A low-resolution spectroscopic follow-up has shown that all the objects are main sequence A/F-type stars. Thus, all the variables are delta Sct-type pulsators. We have added them to the OGLE-IV Collection of Variable Stars.

Due to their scarcity, microlensing events in the Galactic disk are of great interest and high-cadence photometric observations, supplemented by spectroscopic follow-up, are necessary for constraining the physical parameters of the lensing system. In particular, a precise estimate of the source characteristics is required to accurately measure the lens distance and mass. We conducted a spectroscopic follow-up of microlensing event Gaia19bld to derive the properties of the microlensing source and, ultimately, to estimate the mass and distance of the lens. We obtained low- and high-resolution spectroscopy from multiple sites around the world during the course of the event. The spectral lines and template matching analysis has led to two independent, consistent characterizations of the source. We found that the source is a red giant located at about 8.5 kpc from the Earth. Combining our results with the photometric analysis has led to a lens mass of Ml=1.1 M at a distance of D l = 5.5 kpc. We did not find any significant blend light in the spectra (with an upper detection limit of V < 17 mag), which is in agreement with photometric observations. Therefore, we cannot exclude the possibility that the lens is a main-sequence star. Indeed, we predict in this scenario a lens brightness of V about 20 mag, a value that would make it much fainter than the detection limit.

We provide here full Table 1 from Iwanek, P., et al., 2023, "A three-dimensional map of the Milky Way using 66,000 Mira variable stars", ApJS (accepted for publication, DOI: 10.3847/1538-4365/acad7a), which contains mean magnitudes, distances, extinction values, and photometric chemical types for 65,981 Galactic Miras (Iwanek2023_Table1_GalMirasDist.txt file). The corner plot, i.e., the two-dimensional projections of the multi-dimensional posterior parameter spaces fitted to the Galactic Miras distribution is presented in Figure Iwanek2023_corner_plot.png. Patryk Iwanek is partially supported by Kartezjusz program No. POWR.03.02.00-00-I001/16-00, founded by the National Centre for Research and Development, Poland. Szymon Kozłowski acknowledges the support from the National Science Centre, Poland, via grant OPUS 2018/31/B/ST9/00334. This publication makes use of data products from WISE, which is a joint project of the University of California, Los Angeles, and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory/California Institute of Technology, funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). This work is based in part on archival data obtained with the Spitzer Space Telescope, which was operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology under a contract with NASA.

Long secondary periods (LSPs), observed in a third of pulsating red giant stars, are the only unexplained type of large-amplitude stellar variability known at this time. Here we show that this phenomenon is a manifestation of a substellar or stellar companion orbiting the red giant star. Our investigation is based on a sample of about 16,000 well-defined LSP variables detected in the long-term OGLE photometric database of the Milky Way and Magellanic Clouds, combined with the mid-infrared data extracted from the NEOWISE-R archive. From this collection, we selected about 700 objects with stable, large-amplitude, well-sampled infrared light curves and found that about half of them exhibit secondary eclipses, thus presenting an important piece of evidence that the physical mechanism responsible for LSPs is binarity. Namely, the LSP light changes are due to the presence of a dusty cloud orbiting the red giant together with the companion and obscuring the star once per orbit. The secondary eclipses, visible only in the infrared wavelength, occur when the cloud is hidden behind the giant. In this scenario, the low-mass companion is a former planet that has accreted a significant amount of mass from the envelope of its host star and grown into a brown dwarf.

We use nearly 20 years of photometry obtained by the OGLE survey to measure the occurrence rate of wide-orbit (or ice giant) microlensing planets, i.e., with separations from 5 AU to 15 AU and mass-ratios from 10^-4 to 0.033. In a sample of 3112 events we find six previously known wide-orbit planets and a new microlensing planet or brown dwarf OGLE-2017-BLG-0114Lb, for which close and wide orbits are possible and close orbit is preferred. We run extensive simulations of the planet detection efficiency, robustly taking into account the finite-source effects. We find that the extrapolation of the previously measured rate of microlensing planets significantly underpredicts the number of wide-orbit planets. On average, every microlensing star hosts 1.4^+0.9_-0.6 ice giant planets.

The helicity structure of the diffractive electroproducti on of mesons, e+ p ! e+ + Y , is studied in a previously unexplored region of large four-m omentum transfer squared at the proton vertex,t: 0 < t < 3 G eV , wheret = jtj jtjm in . The data used are collected with the H1 detector at HERA in the kinematic domai n 2:5 < Q 2 < 60 G eV , 40 < W < 120 GeV. Notdependence of the r 00 spin density matrix element is found. A significanttdependent helicity non-conservation from the virtual phot on to the meson is observed for the spin density matrix element combination s r 00 + 2r 11 andr 00 + 2r 11 . Thesetdependences are consistently described by a perturbative Q CD model based on the exchange of two gluons. C. Adloff, V. Andreev, B. Andrieu, T. Anthonis, V. Arkadov, A. Astvatsatourov , A. Babaev, J. Bähr , P. Baranov , E. Barrelet , W. Bartel, J. Becker , A. Beglarian, O. Behnke, C. Beier, A. Belousov, Ch. Berger , T. Berndt, J.C. Bizot , J. Böhme, V. Boudry, W. Braunschweig , V. Brisson, H.-B. Bröker, D.P. Brown, W. Brückner , D. Bruncko, J. Bürger , F.W. Büsser , A. Bunyatyan, A. Burrage, G. Buschhorn , L. Bystritskaya, A.J. Campbell , J. Cao, S. Caron, F. Cassol-Brunner , D. Clarke, B. Clerbaux, C. Collard, J.G. Contreras , Y.R. Coppens , J.A. Coughlan, M.-C. Cousinou, B.E. Cox, G. Cozzika, J. Cvach, J.B. Dainton, W.D. Dau, K. Daum, M. Davidsson, B. Delcourt, N. Delerue, R. Demirchyan, A. De Roeck, E.A. De Wolf, C. Diaconu, J. Dingfelder , P. Dixon, V. Dodonov, J.D. Dowell, A. Droutskoi, A. Dubak, C. Duprel , G. Eckerlin, D. Eckstein, V. Efremenko, S. Egli, R. Eichler, F. Eisele, E. Eisenhandler , M. Ellerbrock, E. Elsen, M. Erdmann, W. Erdmann, P.J.W. Faulkner , L. Favart, A. Fedotov, R. Felst , J. Ferencei , S. Ferron, M. Fleischer , Y.H. Fleming, G. Flügge, A. Fomenko, I. Foresti , J. Formánek , G. Franke, E. Gabathuler , K. Gabathuler , J. Garvey, J. Gassner , J. Gayler , R. Gerhards , C. Gerlich, S. Ghazaryan , L. Goerlich, N. Gogitidze, C. Grab, V. Grabski , H. Grässler , T. Greenshaw, G. Grindhammer , T. Hadig, D. Haidt, L. Hajduk, J. Haller, W.J. Haynes , B. Heinemann, G. Heinzelmann , R.C.W. Henderson , S. Hengstmann , H. Henschel , R. Heremans , G. Herrera, I. Herynek, M. Hildebrandt , M. Hilgers, K.H. Hiller, J. Hladký, P. Höting, D. Hoffmann, R. Horisberger , A. Hovhannisyan , S. Hurling, M. Ibbotson, Ç. İşsever , M. Jacquet , M. Jaffre, L. Janauschek , X. Janssen , V. Jemanov, L. Jönsson , C. Johnson , D.P. Johnson , M.A.S. Jones , H. Jung, D. Kant, M. Kapichine, M. Karlsson, O. Karschnick, F. Keil, N. Keller, J. Kennedy, I.R. Kenyon, S. Kermiche, C. Kiesling, P. Kjellberg, M. Klein, C. Kleinwort, T. Kluge, G. Knies, B. Koblitz, S.D. Kolya, V. Korbel, P. Kostka, S.K. Kotelnikov, R. Koutouev, A. Koutov, H. Krehbiel , J. Kroseberg , K. Krüger, A. Küpper, T. Kuhr, T. Kurča, D. Lamb, M.P.J. Landon , W. Lange, T. Laštovička, P. Laycock, E. Lebailly, A. Lebedev, B. Leißner , R. Lemrani , V. Lendermann, S. Levonian, M. Lindstroem, B. List, E. Lobodzinska , B. Lobodzinski , A. Loginov, N. Loktionova, V. Lubimov, S. Lüders, D. Lüke, L. Lytkin, H. Mahlke-Krüger , N. Malden, E. Malinovski, I. Malinovski, R. Maraček, P. Marage, J. Marks, R. Marshall , H.-U. Martyn, J. Martyniak, S.J. Maxfield, D. Meer, A. Mehta, K. Meier, A.B. Meyer, H. Meyer, J. Meyer , P.-O. Meyer , S. Mikocki, D. Milstead, T. Mkrtchyan, R. Mohr, S. Mohrdieck, M.N. Mondragon, F. Moreau, A. Morozov, J.V. Morris, K. Müller, P. Murı́n, V. Nagovizin, B. Naroska, J. Naumann , Th. Naumann , G. Nellen, P.R. Newman , F. Niebergall , C. Niebuhr , O. Nix, G. Nowak, J.E. Olsson , D. Ozerov, V. Panassik , C. Pascaud , G.D. Patel , M. Peez, E. Perez , J.P. Phillips, D. Pitzl, R. Pöschl , I. Potachnikova, B. Povh, G. Rädel , J. Rauschenberger , P. Reimer , B. Reisert , D. Reyna, C. Risler, E. Rizvi, P. Robmann , R. Roosen, A. Rostovtsev , S. Rusakov , K. Rybicki, D.P.C. Sankey , S. Schätzel , J. Scheins , F.-P. Schilling, P. Schleper , D. Schmidt , D. Schmidt , S. Schmidt , S. Schmitt , M. Schneider , L. Schoeffel , A. Schöning, T. Schörner , V. Schröder , H.-C. Schultz-Coulon , C. Schwanenberger , K. Sedlák, F. Sefkow, V. Shekelyan, I. Sheviakov, L.N. Shtarkov, Y. Sirois, T. Sloan, P. Smirnov, Y. Soloviev, D. South, V. Spaskov, A. Specka, H. Spitzer ,

We present the most extensive and detailed reddening maps of the Magellanic Clouds (MCs) derived from the color properties of Red Clump (RC) stars. The analysis is based on the deep photometric maps from the fourth phase of the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment (OGLE-IV), covering approximately 670 deg 2 of the sky in the Magellanic System region. The resulting maps provide reddening information for 180 deg 2 in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) and 75 deg 2 in the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), with a resolution of 1.′7 × 1.′7 in the central parts of the MCs, decreasing to approximately 27′ × 27′ in the outskirts. The mean reddening is E ( V − I ) = 0.100 ± 0.043 mag in the LMC and E ( V − I ) = 0.047 ± 0.025 mag in the SMC. We refine methods of calculating the RC color to obtain the highest possible accuracy of reddening maps based on RC stars. Using spectroscopy of red giants, we find the metallicity gradient in both MCs, which causes a slight decrease of the intrinsic RC color with distance from the galaxy center of ∼0.002 mag/deg in the LMC and between 0.003 and 0.009 mag/deg in the SMC. The central values of the intrinsic RC color are 0.886 and 0.877 mag in the LMC and SMC, respectively. The reddening map of the MCs is available both in downloadable form and as an interactive interface.

We apply the automated AnomalyFinder algorithm of Paper I (Zang et al. 2021b) to 2018-2019 light curves from the $\simeq 13\,{\rm deg}^2$ covered by the six KMTNet prime fields, with cadences $\Gamma \geq 2\,{\rm hr}^{-1}$. We find a total of 10 planets with mass ratios $q<2\times 10^{-4}$, including five newly discovered planets, one planet that was reported in Paper I, and recovery of four previously discovered planets. One of the new planets, OGLE-2018-BLG-0977Lb, is in a planetary-caustic event, while the other four (OGLE-2018-BLG-0506Lb, OGLE-2018-BLG-0516Lb, OGLE-2019-BLG-1492Lb, and KMT-2019-BLG-0253) are revealed by a ``dip'' in the light curve as the source crosses the host-planet axis on the opposite side of the planet. These subtle signals were missed in previous by-eye searches. The planet-host separations (scaled to the Einstein radius), $s$, and planet-host mass ratios, $q$, are, respectively, $(s,q\times 10^5) = (0.88, 4.1)$, $(0.96\pm 0.10, 8.3)$, $(0.94\pm 0.07, 13)$, $(0.97\pm 0.07, 18)$, and $(0.97\pm0.04,4.1)$, where the ``$\pm$'' indicates a discrete degeneracy. The ten planets are spread out over the range $-5