ASSESSing evolved massive stars in NGC 6822 and IC 10

The role of mass loss from massive stars, especially episodic mass loss, is one of the outstanding open questions facing stellar evolution theory. Multiple lines of evidence are pointing to violent, episodic mass-loss events being responsible for removing a large part of the massive stellar envelope, especially in low-metallicity galaxies. The ERC ASSESS project aims to determine whether episodic mass loss is a dominant process in the evolution of the most massive stars by conducting the first extensive, multi-wavelength survey of evolved massive stars in the nearby Universe. The project hinges on the fact that mass-losing stars form dust and are bright in the mid-infrared. We aim to investigate the properties of evolved targets in nearby galaxies and estimate the amount of ejected mass, which will constrain evolutionary models. In this work we present some of our first observational results from the galaxies NGC 6822 and IC 10 obtained with OSIRIS (GTC).