In early July I travelled to Geneva, Switzerland to work with the Geneva Evolutionary Group on understanding the luminosity function of Red Supergiants (RSGs) in M31. We had previously obtained telescope time on UKIRT on Mauna Kea in Hawaii to observe thousands of RSGs. After photometrically separating the ones in M31 out from the foreground stars we were able to determine their luminosities. We can then learn about the mass-loss rates of RSGs from the slope of a simple histogram plot. I travelled to Geneva to compare our observational results with the evolutionary group’s model predictions. There is a paper to come!

After 10 days in Geneva, Garrett joined me and we traveled to Mürren in the Swiss Alps. The picture above is the view from just outside our AirBnB!