A HIDDEN POPULATION OF MASSIVE STARS WITH CIRCUMSTELLAR SHELLS DISCOVERED WITH THE SPITZER SPACE TELESCOPE

We have discovered a large number of circular and elliptical shells at 24 mu m around luminous central sources with MIPS on board the Spitzer Space Telescope. Our archival follow-up effort has revealed 90% of these circumstellar shells to be previously unknown. The majority of the shells is only visible at 24 mu m, but many of the central stars are detected at multiple wavelengths from the mid-to the near-IR regime. The general lack of optical counterparts, however, indicates that these sources represent a population of highly obscured objects. We obtained optical and near-IR spectroscopic observations of the central stars and find most of these objects to be massive stars. In particular, we identify a large population of sources that we argue represents a narrow evolutionary phase, closely related or identical to the luminous blue variable stage of massive stellar evolution.