Massive Stars: From the VLT to the ELT

Abstract

New facilities and technologies have advanced our understanding of massive stars significantly over the past 30 years. Here I introduce a new large survey of massive stars using VLT-FLAMES, noting the target fields and observed binary fractions. These data have been used for the first empirical test of the metallicity dependence of the intensity of stellar winds, finding good agreement with theory -- an important result for the evolutionary models that are used to interpret distant clusters, starbursts, and star-forming galaxies. Looking ahead, plans for future Extremely Large Telescopes (ELTs) are now undergoing significant development, and offer the exciting prospect of observing spatially-resolved massive stars well beyond the Local Group.