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Luminous Blue Variables are massive evolved stars, here we introduce this outstanding class of objects. Described are the specific characteristics, the evolutionary state and what they are connected to other phases and types of massive stars. Our current knowledge of LBVs is limited by the fact that in comparison to other stellar classes and phases only a few ``true LBVs are known. This results from the lack of a unique, fast and always reliable identification scheme for LBVs. It literally takes time to get a true classification of a LBV. In addition the short duration of the LBV phase makes it even harder to catch and identify a star as LBV. We summarize here what is known so far, give an overview of the LBV population and the list of LBV host galaxies. LBV are clearly an important and still not fully understood phase in the live of (very) massive stars, especially due to the large and time variable mass loss during the LBV phase. We like to emphasize again the problem how to clearly identify LBV and that there are more than just one type of LBVs: The giant eruption LBVs or $eta$ Car analogs and the S Dor cycle LBVs.
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In a recent paper, Smith and Tombleson (2015) state that the Luminous Blue Variables (LBVs) in the Milky Way and the Magellanic Clouds are isolated; that they are not spatially associated with young O-type stars. They propose a novel explanation that would overturn the standard view of LBVs. In this paper we test their hypothesis for the LBVs in M31 and M33 as well as the LMC and SMC. In M31 and M33, the LBVs are associated with luminous young stars and supergiants appropriate to their luminosities and positions on the HR Diagram. Moreover, in the Smith and Tombleson scenario most of the LBVs should be runaway stars, but the stars velocities are consistent with their positions in the respective galaxies. In the Magellanic Clouds, those authors sample was a mixed population. We reassess their analysis, removing seven stars that have no clear relation to LBVs. When we separate the more massive classical and the less luminous LBVs, the classical LBVs have a distribution similar to the late O-type stars, while the less luminous LBVs have a distribution like the red supergiants. None of the confirmed LBVs have high velocities or are candidate runaway stars. These results support the accepted description of LBVs as evolved massive stars that have shed a lot of mass, and are now close to their Eddington limit.
In the standard view of massive star evolution, luminous blue variables (LBVs) are transitional objects between the most massive O-type stars and Wolf-Rayet (WR) stars. With short lifetimes, these stars should all be found near one another. A recent study of LBVs in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) found instead that LBVs are considerably more isolated than either O-type stars or WRs, with a distribution intermediate between that of the WRs and red supergiants (RSGs). A similar study, using a more restricted sample of LBVs, reached the opposite conclusion. Both studies relied upon the distance to the nearest spectroscopically identified O-type star to define the degree of isolation. However, our knowledge of the spectroscopic content of the LMC is quite spotty. Here we re-examine the issue using carefully defined photometric criteria to select the highest mass unevolved stars (bright blue stars, or BBSs), using spatially complete photometric catalogs of the LMC, M31, and M33. Our study finds that the LBVs are no more isolated than BBSs or WRs. This result holds no matter which sample of LBVs we employ. A statistical test shows that we can rule out the LBVs having the same distribution as the RSGs, which are about 2x more isolated. We demonstrate the robustness of our results using the second-closest neighbor. Furthermore, the majority of LBVs in the LMC are found in or near OB associations as are the BBS and WRs; the RSGs are not. We conclude that the spatial distribution of LBVs therefore is consistent with the standard picture of massive star evolution.
We perform a study on the optical and infrared photometric properties of known luminous blue variables (LBVs) in M31 using the sample of LBV candidates from the Local Group Galaxy Survey (Massey et al. 2007). We find that M31 LBV candidates show photometric variability ranging from 0.375 to 1.576 magnitudes in rP1 during a three year time-span observed by the Pan-STARRS 1 Andromeda survey (PAndromeda). Their near-infrared colors also follow the distribution of Galactic LBVs as shown by Oksala et al. (2013). We use these features as selection criteria to search for unknown LBV candidates in M31. We thus devise a method to search for candidate LBVs using both optical color from the Local Group Galaxy Survey and infrared color from Two Micron All Sky Survey, as well as photometric variations observed by PAndromeda. We find four sources exhibiting common properties of known LBVs. These sources also exhibit UV emission as seen from GALEX, which is one of the previously adopted method to search for LBV candidates. The locations of the LBVs are well aligned withM31 spiral arms as seen in the UV light, suggesting they are evolved stars at young age given their high-mass nature. We compare these candidates with the latest Geneva evolutionary tracks, which show that our new M31 LBV candidates are massive evolved stars with an age of 10 to 100 million years.
We examine parallaxes and distances for Galactic luminous blue variables (LBVs) in Gaia DR2. The sample includes 11 LBVs and 14 LBV candidates. For about half of the sample, DR2 distances are either similar to commonly adopted literature values, or the DR2 values have large uncertainties. For the rest, reliable DR2 distances differ significantly from values in the literature, and in most cases the Gaia DR2 distance is smaller. Two key results are that the S Doradus instability strip may not be as clearly defined as previously thought, and that there exists a population of LBVs at relatively low luminosities. LBVs seem to occupy a wide swath from the end of the main sequence at the blue edge to 8000 K at the red side, with a spread in luminosity reaching as low as log(L/Lsun)=4.5. The lower-luminosity group corresponds to effective single-star initial masses of 10-25 Msun, and includes objects that have been considered as confirmed LBVs. We discuss implications for LBVs including (1) their instability and origin in binary evolution, (2) connections to some supernova (SN) impostors such as the class of SN 2008S-like objects, and (3) LBVs that may be progenitors of SNe with dense circumstellar material across a wide initial mass range. Although some of the Gaia DR2 distances for LBVs have large uncertainty, this represents the most direct and consistent set of Galactic LBV distance estimates available in the literature.
Recent IR surveys of the Galactic plane have revealed a large number of candidate Luminous Blue Variables. In order to verify these classifications we have been undertaking a long term spectroscopic and photometric monitoring campaign supplemented with tailored non-LTE model atmosphere analysis. Here we present a brief overview of selected aspects of this program, highlighting the prospects for identification, classification and quantitative analysis of LBVs in the near-IR spectral window.
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