We report on the archival near-infrared and mid-infrared observations of 7 persistent X-ray sources situated in the Galactic bulge using data from the UKIRT Infrared Deep Sky Survey (UKIDSS), Spitzer Galactic Legacy Infrared Mid-Plane Survey Extraord
inaire (GLIMPSE) and the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) all-sky survey. We were able to successfully identify, or provide upper flux limits for the systems SAX J1747.0-2853, IGR J17464-2811, AX J1754.2-2754, IGR J17597-2201, IGR J18134-1636, IGR J18256-1035, Ser X-1 and constrain the nature of these systems. In the case of IGR J17597-2201 we present arguments that the source accretes matter from the stellar wind rather than via Roche lobe overflow of the secondary. We suggest that, at its X-ray luminosity of $10^{34-35}$ erg s$^{-1}$, we are probing the poorly known class of wind-fed low-mass X-ray binaries (LMXBs).
We report on the archival optical and near-infrared observations of 6 low mass X-ray binaries situated in the Galactic bulge. We processed several recent Chandra and XMM-Newton as well as Einstein datasets of a binary systems suspected to be ultracom
pact, which gave us arcsec-scale positional uncertainty estimates. We then undertook comprehensive search in existing archives and other Virtual Observatory resources in order to discover unpublished optical/NIR data on these objects. We found and analysed data from ESO Archive and UKIRT Infrared Deep Sky Survey (UKIDSS) on SLX 1735-269, 3A 1742-294, SLX 1744-299, SLX 1744-300, GX 3+1, IGR J17505-2644 systems and publish their finding charts and optical flux constraints in this paper, as well as simple estimates of the physical parameters of these objects.
The Virtual Observatory has reached sufficient maturity for its routine scientific exploitation by astronomers. To prove this statement, here I present a brief description of the complete VO-powered PhD thesis entitled Galactic and extragalactic rese
arch with modern surveys and the Virtual Observatory comprising 4 science cases covering various aspects of astrophysical research. These comprize: (1) homogeneous search and measurement of main physical parameters of Galactic open star clusters in huge multi-band photometric surveys; (2) study of optical-to-NIR galaxy colors using a large homogeneous dataset including spectroscopy and photometry from SDSS and UKIDSS; (3) study of faint low-mass X-ray binary population in modern observational archives; (4) search for optical counterparts of unidentified X-ray objects with large positional uncertainties in the Galactic Plane. All these projects make heavy use of the VO technologies and tools and would not be achievable without them. So refereed papers published in the frame of this thesis can undoubtedly be added to the growing list of VO-based research works.
Automated search for star clusters in J,H,K_s data from 2MASS catalog has been performed using the method developed by Koposov et. al (2008). We have found and verified 153 new clusters in the interval of the galactic latitude -24 < b < 24 degrees. C
olor excesses E(B-V), distance moduli and ages were determined for 130 new and 14 yet-unstudied known clusters. In this paper, we publish a catalog of coordinates, diameters, and main parameters of all the clusters under study. A special web-site available at http://ocl.sai.msu.ru has been developed to facilitate dissemination and scientific usage of the results.
We re-examine the infrared counterpart of the dipping low-mass x-ray binary 4U1323-619. New X-ray data available from the XMM and Chandra observatories combined with archival IR observations from the ESO 3.6m New Technology Telescope allow us to defi
ne a new possible counterpart. We present here its photometric properties and compare them with a simple analytical model of an accretion disc illuminated by the hot central corona known to be present in the binary system.
