Extragalactic Multi-Band Exploration of Red Supergiants (EMBERS): Pipeline, Source Classification, and Bolometric Properties of 101,219 Red Supergiants from James Webb Space Telescope Imaging
astro-ph.SR, astro-ph.GA
Submitted: 2026-09-16
Updated: 2026-09-16
Comments: 43 pages, 25 figures
Code: https://github.com/aswinsuresh24/jwst123
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
The gist: The evolution of red supergiants (RSGs), especially in their final stages before exploding as hydrogen-rich Type II supernovae (SNe), remains poorly understood, owing to small samples of
Terminology
Abstract
The evolution of red supergiants (RSGs), especially in their final stages before exploding as hydrogen-rich Type II supernovae (SNe), remains poorly understood, owing to small samples of well-characterized stars in the Local Group. We present the largest population study of RSGs to date using about10 5 stars with bolometric parameters inferred from archival James Webb Space Telescope/Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) imaging of 15 galaxies within 20 Mpc. We also present jwst123, a newly-developed general-purpose NIRCam reduction and photometry pipeline, and its application to our set of 15 galaxies. We build a simulation-based parameter inference framework to rapidly fit multi-band photometry of about1.5 million luminous stars in milliseconds per source. Using clustering in the effective temperature (T eff)-luminosity (L/L)-dust optical depth (τ V) phase space, we introduce a novel method to select RSGs with high completeness and purity. Leveraging the scale of our catalog, we find that the dustiest RSGs prefer metal-rich hosts, and RSG luminosities correlate with host specific star formation rate, suggesting that environment shapes RSG evolution. While most selected RSGs agree with theoretical stellar evolution tracks, we identify a new population of 1,669 RSGs that are heavily dust-enshrouded (τ V>4), overluminous ((L/L)>5.55), or anomalously cool (T eff<3000, K), including analogs of known SN progenitors. Our catalog provides a population-scale baseline for understanding massive stellar evolution and connecting field RSGs to dusty progenitors of Type II SNe.
Sources
- Calibrating Eruptive Mass Loss in Red Supergiants with Local Group Data
- Implications of modern mass-loss rates for massive stars
- Evolved Supergiants in PHANGS I: Red Supergiants in 19 Galaxies between 5-20 Mpc with HST and JWST
- Validating Bayesian Inference Algorithms with Simulation-Based Calibration
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