Bringing VY canis majoris down to size: An improved determination of its effective temperature

The star VY CMa is a late-type M supergiant with many peculiarities, mostly related to the intense circumstellar environment due to the star's high mass-loss rate. Claims have been made that would imply that this star is considerably more luminous (L similar to 5x10(5) L-circle dot) and larger (R similar to 2800 R-circle dot) than other Galactic red supergiants (RSGs). Indeed, such a location in the H-R diagram would be well within the Hayashi forbidden zone,'' where stars cannot be in hydrostatic equilibrium. These extraordinary properties, however, rest on an assumed effective temperature of 2800 - 3000 K, far cooler than recent work has shown RSGs to be. To obtain a better estimate, we fit newly obtained spectrophotometry in the optical and NIR with the same MARCS models used for our recent determination of the physical properties of other RSGs; we also use V - K and V - J from the literature to derive an effective temperature. We find that the star likely has a temperature of 3650 K, a luminosity L similar to 6 x 10(4) L-circle dot, and a radius of similar to 600 R-circle dot. These values are consistent with VY CMa being an ordinary, evolved 15 M-circle dot RSG and agree well with the Geneva evolutionary tracks. We find that the circumstellar dust region has a temperature of 760 K, and an effective radius of similar to 130 AU, if spherical geometry is assumed for the latter. What causes this star to have such a high mass loss and large variations in brightness ( but with little change in color) remains a mystery at present, although we speculate that perhaps this star and NML Cyg are simply normal RSGs caught during an unusually unstable time.