Professor Stephen Smartt CBE FRS MRIA

Abstract:

We present the discovery of a red supergiant star that exploded as supernova 2003gd in the nearby spiral galaxy M74. The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and the Gemini Telescope imaged this galaxy 6 to 9 months before the supernova explosion, and subsequent HST images confirm the positional coincidence of the supernova with a single resolved star that is a red supergiant of 8(+4)(-2) solar masses. This confirms both stellar evolution models and supernova theories predicting that cool red supergiants are the immediate progenitor stars of type II-plateau supernovae.

Abstract:

In this review I discuss the capabilities that the GTC, and in particular the OSIRIS spectrometer, will bring to studying massive stellar populations within Local Group galaxies and even beyond. By observing massive stars in other dwarf irregular and spiral galaxies one can probe star formation and stellar evolution in extreme environments, the wind properties of massive luminous stars, and determine distances to an accuracy of ∼10%.