Our position within the Galactic plane and the dust obscuration make it challenging to retrieve a true picture of the Milky Way's morphology. While the Milky Way has been recognized as a barred spiral galaxy since the 1960s, there is still uncertainty about the exact number of spiral arms it contains. Currently, our understanding of the galaxy is evolving, thanks to the unprecedented details provided by Gaia's parallactic distances. To shed light on the spatial distribution of red supergiants (RSGs) on the Plane and their uniformity of parameters across it, a census of galactic RSGs detected by Gaia is needed. Candidate RSGs are extracted from the combined Gaia DR3 and 2MASS catalogs using color criteria and parallactic distances. The sample included 335 stars which were not included in catalogs of previously known RSGs detected by Gaia DR3. Interstellar and circumstellar extinction values are estimated from the infrared bands. Spectral types are collected from Simbad or VIZIER databases and, for 135 candidates, are inferred from the Gaia DR3 BPRP spectra. Stellar luminosities are inferred using photometric measurements and the Gaia DR3 distances. The analysis performed warrants a genuine sample of O-rich late-type stars, and the calculated luminosities confirm that the sample is mostly made of stars brighter than Mbol=-5mag. This new sample represents a 40% increase of the number of highly-probable RSGs compared to previous studies. When looking at the X and Y distribution on the Galactic plane, beside the populous Perseus associations of RSGs, and the Sagittarius group of RSGs, a novel population of highly-probable RSGs populating the more distant Scutum-Centaurus arm appears.

Cone search capability for table J/A+A/698/A282/table1 (Lists the 335 bright late-type stars (cRSGs))

Cone search capability for table J/A+A/698/A282/tab_xyv (*Joint samples of stars in areas A & B)