Census of self-obscured massive stars

Here, we carry out a systematic mid-IR photometric search for massive, luminous, and self-obscured stars in four nearby galaxies: M33, NGC 300, M81, and NGC 6946. For detection, we use only the 3.6um and 4.5um IRAC bands, as these can still be used for multi-epoch Spitzer surveys of nearby galaxies (<~10Mpc).

We combine familiar point-spread function and aperture photometry with an innovative application of image subtraction to catalog the self-obscured massive stars in these galaxies. In particular, we verify that stars analogous to the progenitors of the NGC 6946 (SN 2008S) and NGC 300 transients are truly rare in all four galaxies: their number may be as low as ~1 per galaxy at any given moment. This result empirically supports the idea that the dust-enshrouded phase is a very short lived phenomenon in the lives of many massive stars and that these objects constitute a natural extension of the asymptotic giant branch sequence.