Context. Massive binaries play a crucial role in the Universe. Knowing the distributions of their orbital parameters is important for a wide range of topics from stellar feedback to binary evolution channels and from the distribution of supernova types to gravitational wave progenitors, yet no direct measurements exist outside the Milky Way.Aims. The Tarantula Massive Binary Monitoring project was designed to help fill this gap by obtaining multi-epoch radial velocity (RV) monitoring of 102 massive binaries in the 30 Doradus region.Methods. In this paper we analyze 32 FLAMES/GIRAFFE observations of 93 O- and 7 B-type binaries. We performed a Fourier analysis and obtained orbital solutions for 82 systems: 51 single-lined (SB1) and 31 double-lined (SB2) spectroscopic binaries.Results. Overall, the binary fraction and orbital properties across the 30 Doradus region are found to be similar to existing Galactic samples. This indicates that within these domains environmental effects are of second order in shaping the properties of massive binary systems. A small difference is found in the distribution of orbital periods, which is slightly flatter (in log space) in 30 Doradus than in the Galaxy, although this may be compatible within error estimates and differences in the fitting methodology. Also, orbital periods in 30 Doradus can be as short as 1.1 d, somewhat shorter than seen in Galactic samples. Equal mass binaries (q> 0.95) in 30 Doradus are all found outside NGC 2070, the central association that surrounds R136a, the very young and massive cluster at 30 Doradus’s core. Most of the differences, albeit small, are compatible with expectations from binary evolution. One outstanding exception, however, is the fact that earlier spectral types (O2–O7) tend to have shorter orbital periods than later spectral types (O9.2–O9.7).Conclusions. Our results point to a relative universality of the incidence rate of massive binaries and their orbital properties in the metallicity range from solar (Z ⊙) to about half solar. This provides the first direct constraints on massive binary properties in massive star-forming galaxies at the Universe’s peak of star formation at redshifts z ~ 1 to 2 which are estimated to have Z ~ 0.5 Z ⊙.

We present a catalog of 5324 massive stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), with accurate spectral types compiled from the literature, and a photometric catalog for a subset of 3654 of these stars, with the goal of exploring their infrared properties. The photometric catalog consists of stars with infrared counterparts in the Spitzer, SAGE-SMC survey database, for which we present uniform photometry from 0.3-24 um in the UBVIJHKs+IRAC+MIPS24 bands. We compare the color magnitude diagrams and color-color diagrams to those of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), finding that the brightest infrared sources in the SMC are also the red supergiants, supergiant B[e] (sgB[e]) stars, luminous blue variables, and Wolf-Rayet stars, with the latter exhibiting less infrared excess, the red supergiants being less dusty and the sgB[e] stars being on average less luminous. Among the objects detected at 24 um are a few very luminous hypergiants, 4 B-type stars with peculiar, flat spectral energy distributions, and all 3 known luminous blue variables. We detect a distinct Be star sequence, displaced to the red, and suggest a novel method of confirming Be star candidates photometrically. We find a higher fraction of Oe and Be stars among O and early-B stars in the SMC, respectively, when compared to the LMC, and that the SMC Be stars occur at higher luminosities. We estimate mass-loss rates for the red supergiants, confirming the correlation with luminosity even at the metallicity of the SMC. Finally, we confirm the new class of stars displaying composite A & F type spectra, the sgB[e] nature of 2dFS1804 and find the F0 supergiant 2dFS3528 to be a candidate luminous blue variable with cold dust.

We present the optical spectroscopic evolution of SN 2023ixf seen in subnight cadence spectra from 1.18 to 15 days after explosion. We identify high-ionization emission features, signatures of interaction with material surrounding the progenitor star, that fade over the first 7 days, with rapid evolution between spectra observed within the same night. We compare the emission lines present and their relative strength to those of other supernovae with early interaction, finding a close match to SN 2020pni and SN 2017ahn in the first spectrum and SN 2014G at later epochs. To physically interpret our observations, we compare them to CMFGEN models with confined, dense circumstellar material around a red supergiant (RSG) progenitor from the literature. We find that very few models reproduce the blended N iii (λλ4634.0,4640.6)/C iii (λλ4647.5,4650.0) emission lines observed in the first few spectra and their rapid disappearance thereafter, making this a unique diagnostic. From the best models, we find a mass-loss rate of 10⁻³–10⁻² M _⊙ yr⁻¹, which far exceeds the mass-loss rate for any steady wind, especially for an RSG in the initial mass range of the detected progenitor. These mass-loss rates are, however, similar to rates inferred for other supernovae with early circumstellar interaction. Using the phase when the narrow emission features disappear, we calculate an outer dense radius of circumstellar material R _CSM,out ≈ 5 × 10¹⁴ cm, and a mean circumstellar material density of ρ = 5.6 × 10⁻¹⁴ g cm⁻³. This is consistent with the lower limit on the outer radius of the circumstellar material we calculate from the peak Hα emission flux, R _CSM,out ≳ 9 × 10¹³ cm.

The survey for DUST in Nearby Galaxies with Spitzer (DUSTiNGS) identified several candidate Asymptotic Giant Branch (AGB) stars in nearby dwarf galaxies and showed that dust can form even in very metal-poor systems ( ). Here, we present a follow-up survey with WFC3/IR on the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), using filters that are capable of distinguishing carbon-rich (C-type) stars from oxygen-rich (M-type) stars: F127M, F139M, and F153M. We include six star-forming DUSTiNGS galaxies (NGC 147, IC 10, Pegasus dIrr, Sextans B, Sextans A, and Sag DIG), all more metal-poor than the Magellanic Clouds and spanning 1 dex in metallicity. We double the number of dusty AGB stars known in these galaxies and find that most are carbon rich. We also find 26 dusty M-type stars, mostly in IC 10. Given the large dust excess and tight spatial distribution of these M-type stars, they are most likely on the upper end of the AGB mass range (stars undergoing Hot Bottom Burning). Theoretical models do not predict significant dust production in metal-poor M-type stars, but we see evidence for dust excess around M-type stars even in the most metal-poor galaxies in our sample ( ). The low metallicities and inferred high stellar masses (up to ∼10 ) suggest that AGB stars can produce dust very early in the evolution of galaxies (∼30 Myr after they form), and may contribute significantly to the dust reservoirs seen in high-redshift galaxies.

Context.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 literature, yielding results with a dispersion of two to three orders of magnitude.Aims.We determine an accurate mass-loss rate relation with luminosity and other parameters using a large, clean sample of RSGs. In this way, we shed light into the underlying physical mechanism and explain the discrepancy between previous works.Methods.We assembled a sample of 2219 RSG candidates in the Large Magellanic Cloud, with ultraviolet to mid-infrared photometry in up to 49 filters. We determined the luminosity of each RSG by integrating the spectral energy distribution and the mass-loss rate using the radiative transfer codeDUSTY.Results.Our derived RSG mass-loss rates range from approximately 10⁻⁹ M_⊙yr⁻¹to 10⁻⁵ M_⊙yr⁻¹, mainly depending on the luminosity. The average mass-loss rate is 9.3 × 10⁻⁷ M_⊙yr⁻¹for log(L/L_⊙) > 4, corresponding to a dust-production rate of ∼3.6 × 10⁻⁹ M_⊙yr⁻¹. We established a mass-loss rate relation as a function of luminosity and effective temperature. Furthermore, we found a turning point in the relation of mass-loss rate versus luminosity at approximately log(L/L_⊙) = 4.4, indicating enhanced rates beyond this limit. We show that this enhancement correlates with photometric variability. We compared our results with prescriptions from the literature, finding an agreement with works assuming steady-state winds. Additionally, we examined the effect of different assumptions on our models and found that radiatively driven winds result in mass-loss rates higher by two to three orders of magnitude, which is unrealistically high for RSGs. For grain sizes < 0.1 μm, the predicted mass-loss rates are higher by a factor of 25−30 than larger grain sizes. Finally, we found that 21% of our sample constitute current binary candidates. This has a minor effect on our mass-loss relation.

The characteristics of infrared properties and mid-infrared (MIR) variability of red supergiant (RSG) stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) are analyzed based on 12 bands of near-infrared (NIR) to MIR co-added data from 2MASS, Spitzer and WISE, and ∼6.6 yr of MIR time-series data collected by the ALLWISE and NEOWISE-R projects. 773 RSGs candidates were compiled from the literature and verified by using the color-magnitude diagram (CMD), spectral energy distribution (SED) and MIR variability. About 15% of valid targets in the IRAC1–IRAC2/IRAC2–IRAC3 diagram may show polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) emission. We show that arbitrary dereddening Q parameters related to the IRAC4, S9W, WISE3, WISE4, and MIPS24 bands could be constructed based on a precise measurement of MIR interstellar extinction law. Several peculiar outliers in our sample are discussed, in which one outlier might be a RSG right before the explosion or an extreme asymptotic giant branch (AGB) star in the very late evolutionary stage based on the MIR spectrum and photometry. There are 744 identified RSGs in the final sample having both the WISE1- and WISE2-band time-series data. The results show that the MIR variability is increasing along with the increasing of brightness. There is a relatively tight correlation between the MIR variability, mass loss rate (MLR; in terms of K_S–WISE3 color), and the warm dust or continuum (in terms of WISE4 magnitude/flux), where the MIR variability is evident for the targets with K_S–WISE3 > 1.0 mag and WISE4 < 6.5 mag, while the rest of the targets show much smaller MIR variability. The MIR variability is also correlated with the MLR for which targets with larger variability also show larger MLR with an approximate upper limit of −6.1 M_⊙ yr⁻¹. Both the variability and the luminosity may be important for the MLR since the WISE4-band flux is increasing exponentially along with the degeneracy of luminosity and variability. The identified RSG sample has been compared with the theoretical evolutionary models and shown that the discrepancy between observation and evolutionary models can be mitigated by considering both variability and extinction.