Red Supergiants as Cosmic Abundance Probes: The Sculptor Galaxy NGC 300
  We present a quantitative spectroscopic study of twenty-seven red supergiants
in the Sculptor Galaxy NGC 300. J-band spectra were obtained using KMOS on the
VLT and studied with state of the art synthetic spectra including NLTE
corrections for the strongest diagnostic lines. We report a central metallicity
of [Z]= -0.03 +/- 0.05 with a gradient of -0.083 +/- 0.014 [dex/kpc], in
agreement with previous studies of blue supergiants and H II-region auroral
line measurements. This result marks the first application of the J-band
spectroscopic method to a population of individual red supergiant stars beyond
the Local Group of galaxies and reveals the great potential of this technique.
