ИСТИНА

Massive stars lose mass in the form of stellar winds as well as outflows and instantaneous ejections, caused by various processes in binary systems. The lost material forms circumstellar nebulae of diverse shapes, which could be detected with modern infrared telescopes. We present the results of search for massive stars through detection of compact mid-infrared nebulae in the archival data of the Spitzer Space Telescope and Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE). Follow-up spectroscopy of central stars of these nebulae led to the discovery of about three dozens of candidate luminous blue variables (LBVs). Four of them were confirmed to be bona fide LBVs by means of spectroscopic and photometric monitoring, which brings the number of these very rare stars to eighteen. The majority of other central stars associated with well-shaped circular or bipolar nebulae turns out to be either blue supergiants, Wolf-Rayet stars of the late nitrogen sequence or Be stars.