We report the discovery of eight new R Coronae Borealis ( RCB ) stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud ( LMC ) using the MACHO project photometry database .
The discovery of these new stars increases the number of known RCB stars in the LMC to thirteen .
We have also discovered four stars similar to the Galactic variable DY Per .
These stars decline much more slowly and are cooler than the RCB stars .
The absolute luminosities of the Galactic RCB stars are unknown since there is no direct measurement of the distance to any Galactic RCB star .
Hence , the importance of the LMC RCB stars .
We find a much larger range of absolute magnitudes ( M _ { V } = -2.5 to -5 mag ) than inferred from the small pre-MACHO sample of LMC RCB stars .
It is likely that there is a temperature - M _ { V } relationship with the cooler stars being intrinsically fainter .
Cool ( \sim 5000 K ) RCB stars are much more common than previously thought based on the Galactic RCB star sample .
Using the fairly complete sample of RCB stars discovered in the MACHO fields , we have estimated the likely number of RCB stars in the Galaxy to be \sim 3,200 .
The SMC MACHO fields were also searched for RCB stars but none were found .