Related papers: Physical Properties of Red Supergiants

In the past few years, several clusters containing large numbers of red supergiants have been discovered. These clusters are amongst the most massive young clusters known in the Milky Way, with stellar masses reaching a few…

Using the PACS and SPIRE spectrometers on-board the Herschel Space Observatory, we obtained spectra of two red supergiants (RSGs) in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). Multiple rotational CO emission lines (J=6-5 to 15-14) and 15 H2O lines…

Red supergiants (RSGs), as the descendants of OB-type stars and the progenitors of supernovae, provide crucial insights into the evolution of massive stars, particularly in binary systems. Previous studies show that the binary fraction of…

Massive stars less massive than ~30 Msol evolve into a red supergiant after the main sequence. Given a standard IMF, this means about 80% of all single massive stars will experience this phase. RSGs are dominated by convection, with a…

The precise definition of the lower mass limit of red supergiant stars (RSGs) is an open question in astrophysics and does not attract too much attention. Here we assemble a spectroscopic evolved cool star sample with 6,602 targets,…

Increasing the statistics of evolved massive stars in the Local Group enables investigating their evolution at different metallicities. During the late stages of stellar evolution, the physics of some phenomena, such as episodic and…

We estimate physical parameters for the late-type massive stars observed as part of the VLT-FLAMES Tarantula Survey (VFTS) in the 30 Doradus region of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). The observational sample comprises 20 candidate red…

Due to their transitionary nature, yellow supergiants provide a critical challenge for evolutionary modeling. Previous studies within M31 and the SMC show that the Geneva evolutionary models do a poor job at predicting the lifetimes of…

We present deep J,H,Ks photometry and accurate Color Magnitude Diagrams down to K ~18.5, for a sample of 13 globular clusters in the Large Magellanic Cloud. This data set combined with the previous sample of 6 clusters published by our…

Recent work measuring the binary fraction of evolved red supergiants (RSGs) in the Magellanic Clouds points to a value between 15-30%, with the majority of the companions being un-evolved B-type stars as dictated by stellar evolution. Here…

Deriving the physical properties of red supergiants (RSGs) depends upon accurate corrections for reddening by dust. We use our recent modeling of the optical spectra of RSGs to address this topic. We find: (1) Previous broad-band studies…

We aim to identify and characterise binary systems containing red supergiant (RSG) stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) using a newly available ultraviolet (UV) point source catalogue obtained using the Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope…

Mass-loss in red supergiants (RSGs) is generally recognized to be episodic, but mass-loss prescriptions fail to reflect this. Evolutionary models show that the total amount of mass lost during this phase determines if these stars evolve to…

Current models of stellar evolution predict that stars more massive than $\sim6\:$M$_{\odot}$ should have completely depleted all lithium (Li) in their atmospheres by the time when they reach the He core burning phase. Against this, a…

The evolution of massive stars surviving the red supergiant (RSG) stage remains unexplored due to the rarity of such objects. The yellow hypergiants (YHGs) appear to be the warm counterparts of post-RSG classes located near the…

We present near-IR spectroscopy of red supergiant (RSG) stars in NGC 6822, obtained with the new VLT-KMOS instrument. From comparisons with model spectra in the J-band we determine the metallicity of 11 RSGs, finding a mean value of [Z] =…

We provide atmospheric parameters and rotational velocities of a large sample (~400) of O- and early B-type stars, analysed in a homogeneous and consistent manner, for use in constraining theoretical models. Comparison of the rotational…

Red supergiants (RSGs) are evolved massive stars that represent extremes, in both their physical sizes and their cool temperatures, of the massive star population. Effective temperature ($T_{\rm eff}$) is the most critical physical property…

The high mass-loss rates of red supergiants (RSGs) drastically affect their evolution and final fate, but their mass-loss mechanism remains poorly understood. Various empirical prescriptions scaled with luminosity have been derived in the…

The binary fraction of unevolved massive stars is thought to be 70-100% but there are few observational constraints on the binary fraction of the evolved version of a subset of these stars, the red supergiants (RSGs). Here we identify a…