LMC AGB stars IRAS fluxes

Of the 156 IRAS sources that are detected either in separate cross-scans or in more than one passband, 63 have [12-25] colors consistent with their being either stellar photospheres or circumstellar dust shells.

Seventeen of these we identify with bright (I_c_<9) foreground stars in our own Galaxy, while a further 17 are associated with red supergiants in the LMC. Of the remaining stars, no more than five are likely to be optically visible AGB stars, while the rest have no obvious optical counterpart. This immediately rules out the presence of sufficient high-luminosity "cocoon" stars to explain the observed deficit of several hundred luminous (M_bol_<-6) AGB stars between the predictions of standard models of AGB evolution and the observed luminosity function.