INFRARED SPECTROPHOTOMETRY OF BRIGHT CARBON STARS

We present medium-resolution (lambda/DELTAlambda congruent-to 500) abs olute spectrophotometry of 15 bright and cool (N-type) carbon stars. T he observations were made with a cooled grating spectrometer within th e J, H, K and L' atmospheric windows (1-4.2 mum). The observed C stars were AQ Sgr, RT Cap, RV Cyg, RY Dra, S Sct, T Lyr, TX Psc, TW Oph, V Aql, V Cyg, VX And, V460 Cyg, Y CVn, Z Psc and WZ Cas. All of them, wi th the exception of V Cyg, are non-Mira variables and do not show stro ng infrared excesses, being presumably free of thick circumstellar env elopes. A listing of binned fluxes and the strengths of some molecular features is given, in addition to plots of the flux distributions of the observed stars. For the four stars with measured occultation angul ar diameters (AQ Sgr, RT Cap, TX Psc and TW Oph), we derive new effect ive temperatures using our spectrophotometry and the published diamete rs.