J/ApJ/959/102 Physical properties of cool SGs in LMC (Dorn-Wallenstein+, 2023)
Physical properties of 5000 cool Large Magellanic Cloud supergiants with Gaia XP
spectra: a detailed portrait of the upper H-R diagram hints at missing supernova
progenitors.
Dorn-Wallenstein T.Z., Neugent K.F., Levesque E.M.
<Astrophys. J., 959, 102 (2023)>
=2023ApJ...959..102D 2023ApJ...959..102D
ADC_Keywords: Effective temperatures; Stars, supergiant; Magellanic Clouds;
Spectra, optical
Keywords: Stellar properties ; Stellar effective temperatures ;
Stellar luminosities ; Regression ; Multivariate analysis ;
Spectroscopy ; Large Magellanic Cloud ; Late-type supergiant stars ;
Supergiant stars
Abstract:
Characterizing the physical properties of cool supergiants allows us
to probe the final stages of a massive star's evolution before it
undergoes core collapse. Despite their importance, the fundamental
properties of these stars --logTeff and logL/L☉-- are only known
for a limited number of objects. The third data release of the Gaia
mission contains precise photometry and low-resolution spectroscopy of
hundreds of cool supergiants in the LMC with well-constrained
properties. Using these data, we train a simple and easily
interpretable machine-learning model to regress effective temperatures
and luminosities with high accuracy and precision comparable to the
training data. We then apply our model to 5000 cool supergiants, many
of which have no previously published Teff or L estimates. The
resulting Hertzprung-Russell diagram is well populated, allowing us to
study the distribution of cool supergiants in great detail. Examining
the luminosity functions of our sample, we find a notable flattening
in the luminosity function of yellow supergiants above logL/L☉=5,
and a corresponding steepening of the red supergiant luminosity
function. We place this finding in context with previous results and
present its implications for the infamous red supergiant problem.
Description:
Using a well-vetted training sample of 641 cool supergiants (from
Neugent+ 2012, J/ApJ/749/177), we develop a model to predict
effective temperatures and luminosities for ∼5000 cool supergiants
in the LMC (Figure 4).
Our measurements are comparable with --and for warmer AF supergiants,
overall more reliable than-- values derived from 2MASS photometry.
File Summary:
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FileName Lrecl Records Explanations
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ReadMe 80 . This file
tableb1.dat 35 6146 Temperatures and luminosities for 6146 AFGKM
supergiants
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See also:
II/246 : 2MASS All-Sky Catalog of Point Sources (Cutri+ 2003)
I/347 : Distances to 1.33 billion stars in Gaia DR2 (Bailer-Jones+, 2018)
I/352 : Distances to 1.47 billion stars in Gaia EDR3 (Bailer-Jones+, 2021)
I/355 : Gaia DR3 Part 1. Main source (Gaia Collaboration, 2022)
I/357 : Gaia DR3 Part 3. Non-single stars (Gaia Collaboration, 2022)
J/A+A/363/L1 : The distance modulus of the LMC (Kovacs, 2000)
J/ApJ/703/441 : Yellow supergiants in M31 (Drout+, 2009)
J/MNRAS/395/1409 : Type II-P SN progenitor constraints (Smartt+, 2009)
J/ApJ/719/1784 : Yellow supergiants in the SMC (Neugent+, 2010)
J/AJ/142/103 : Cool evolved stars in SAGE-SMC and SAGE-LMC (Boyer+, 2011)
J/ApJ/750/97 : The yellow and red supergiants of M33 (Drout+, 2012)
J/A+A/537/A146 : Stellar models with rot. 0.8<M<120, Z=0.014 (Ekstrom+, 2012)
J/ApJ/759/11 : Wolf-Rayet content of M31 (Neugent+, 2012)
J/ApJ/749/177 : Yellow and red supergiants in the LMC (Neugent+, 2012)
J/A+A/558/A103 : Stellar models with rot. 0.8<M<120, Z=0.002 (Georgy+, 2013)
J/ApJ/825/50 : Var. stars in M31 & M33. III. YSGs & RSGs (Gordon+, 2016)
J/A+A/618/A137 : MC cool supergiants spectra (Dorda+, 2018)
J/A+A/616/A12 : Gaia DR2 sources in GC and dSph (Gaia Collaboration+, 2018)
J/A+A/616/A175 : Red supergiant stars in the LMC. II. (Yang+, 2018)
J/A+A/627/A24 : Stellar models with rot. 1.7<M<120, Z=0.0004 (Groh+, 2019)
J/A+A/629/A91 : A source catalog for the SMC (Yang+, 2019)
J/ApJ/902/24 : Evolved stars with TESS. II. (Dorn-Wallenstein+, 2020)
J/ApJ/900/118 : RSGs in LMC & sp. follow-up for LMC & SMC (Neugent+, 2020)
J/ApJ/889/44 : UKIRT obs. of red supergiants in M31 (Neugent+, 2020)
J/ApJ/913/32 : Classif. from Gaia & WISE data (Dorn-Wallenstein+, 2021)
J/ApJ/922/177 : 2MASS red supergiants in the SMC (Massey+, 2021)
J/AJ/161/79 : Red supergiant stars in M31 and M33 (Massey+, 2021)
J/A+A/646/A141 : A source catalog for the LMC (Yang+, 2021)
J/ApJ/931/157 : UV-to-NIR sp. of 8 Wolf-Rayet stars in LMC (Aadland+, 2022)
J/ApJ/940/27 : Pulsator supergiants in the MCs (Dorn-Wallenstein+, 2022)
J/A+A/666/A122 : M31/M33 sources with known spectral type (Maravelias+, 2022)
J/ApJ/942/69 : Red supergiants in M31, M33, SMC and LMC (Massey+, 2023)
Byte-by-byte Description of file: tableb1.dat
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Bytes Format Units Label Explanations
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1- 19 I19 --- Gaia Gaia DR3 source ID
21- 25 F5.3 [K] logTeff [3.3/4.4] Log effective temperature
27- 31 F5.3 [Lsun] logL [3/5.72] Log luminosity
33- 33 A1 --- Ref [NY] Source of known stellar properties (1)
35- 35 I1 --- Qual [0/2]? Quality of predicted values (2)
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Note (1): Reference code as follows:
N = stars from N12 (Neugent+ 2012, J/ApJ/749/177; 641 occurrences)
Y = stars from Y21 (Yang+ 2021, J/A+A/646/A141), for which logTeff and logL
are derived by our regressor (5505 occurrences)
Note (2): Code as follows:
0 = stars from N12 (Neugent+ 2012, J/ApJ/749/177) or
Y21 (Yang+ 2021, J/A+A/646/A141) that fall within the temperature
and luminosity boundaries of the training set (1272 occurrences)
1 = low-L stars (4449 occurrences)
2 = out-of-boundary (OOB) stars (425 occurrences)
See Section 3.
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History:
From electronic version of the journal
(End) Prepared by [AAS], Emmanuelle Perret [CDS] 29-Jan-2026