A newly discovered stellar type: dusty post-red giant branch stars in the Magellanic Clouds

Abstract

Context. We present a newly discovered class of low-luminosity, dusty, evolved objects in the Magellanic Clouds. These objects have dust excesses, stellar parameters, and spectral energy distributions similar to those of dusty post-asymptotic giant branch (post-AGB) stars. However, they have lower luminosities and hence lower masses. We suggest that they have evolved off the red giant branch (RGB) instead of the AGB as a result of binary interaction.