{
  "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 $\\sim10^5$ 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 $\\sim1.5$ million luminous stars in milliseconds per source. Using clustering in the effective temperature ($T_{\\rm eff}$)-luminosity ($\\log L/L_{\\odot}$)-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 ($\\log(L/L_{\\odot})>5.55$), or anomalously cool ($T_{\\rm eff}<3000\\,{\\rm K}$), 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.",
  "abstract_shown": true,
  "affiliations": [],
  "article_type": null,
  "arxiv": "2609.19344",
  "author_total": 9,
  "authors": [
    {
      "name": "Aswin Suresh"
    },
    {
      "name": "Charles D. Kilpatrick"
    },
    {
      "name": "Wen-fai Fong"
    },
    {
      "name": "Maria R. Drout"
    },
    {
      "name": "Daichi Hiramatsu"
    },
    {
      "name": "Luca Izzo"
    },
    {
      "name": "Wynn V. Jacobson-Galán"
    },
    {
      "name": "Armin Rest"
    },
    {
      "name": "Samaporn Tinyanont"
    }
  ],
  "bibtex": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/6f1sdx1p4ng06.bib",
  "cited_by": 0,
  "doi": "10.48550/arxiv.2609.19344",
  "fulltext_url": null,
  "id": "6f1sdx1p4ng06",
  "issns": [],
  "landing_url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.19344",
  "language": null,
  "licence": "CC-BY-4.0",
  "licence_label": "CC BY 4.0",
  "licence_source": "article",
  "licence_url": "http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "metadata_licence": "CC0-1.0",
  "native_subjects": [
    [
      "arxiv",
      "astro-ph.GA"
    ],
    [
      "arxiv",
      "astro-ph.SR"
    ],
    [
      "openalex",
      "3103|Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies"
    ]
  ],
  "openalex": "W7213607544",
  "pdf_url": "https://arxiv.org/pdf/2609.19344",
  "pmcid": null,
  "pmid": null,
  "published": "2026-09-16",
  "publisher": null,
  "ris": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/6f1sdx1p4ng06.ris",
  "sources": [
    {
      "first_seen": "2026-10-30T12:22:19Z",
      "native_id": "2609.19344",
      "source": "arxiv",
      "url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.19344"
    }
  ],
  "subjects": [
    {
      "field": "astronomy",
      "origin": "arxiv:astro-ph.GA",
      "subfield": "galaxies"
    },
    {
      "field": "astronomy",
      "origin": "arxiv:astro-ph.SR",
      "subfield": "stellar"
    }
  ],
  "title": "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",
  "title_text": "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",
  "type": "preprint",
  "updated_at": "2026-10-30T12:22:19Z",
  "url": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/6f1sdx1p4ng06",
  "venue": "arXiv",
  "versions": []
}