Thursday

We present what may be the first method capable of identifying
envelope-stripped massive stars, which are helium-burning stars that have
lost their hydrogen envelope due to binary interaction. Because of the
shape of the mass-function these objects are thought to be more common
than ordinary Wolf-Rayet stars but they are notoriously hard to identify.
Using a catalogue of millions of optical and infrared photometric
data-points, we have detected 26 new massive star candidates in the
SMC through Kurucz and TLUSTY stellar atmosphere fits.
Interestingly, five of them are consistent with stripped stars, as they
fall within the (B-V) colour range of known Wolf-Rayet stars, but with
lower apparent magnitudes.
We present a grid of CMFGEN models to help identify our candidates and we
outline our plans for spectroscopic follow-up with SALT.