The Effective Temperatures and Physical Properties of Magellanic Cloud Red Supergiants: The Effects of Metallicity

We present moderate-resolution optical spectrophotometry of 36 red supergiants (RSGs) in the LMC and 39 RSGs in the SMC. Using the MARCS stellar atmosphere models to fit this spectrophotometry, we determine the reddenings, effective temperatures and other physical properties, such as bolometric luminosity and effective stellar radii, and compare these to stellar evolutionary models. Current address: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02139. Visiting Astronomer, Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO), National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO), which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA), Inc., under cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation (NSF).