MILLIMETER CONTINUUM EMISSION FROM SYMBIOTIC STARS .1. THE MEASUREMENTS

We report millimetre-wave continuum observations of symbiotic stars ob tained using the Swedish-ESO Submillimetre Telescope, the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope and the Owens Valley Radio Observatory millimetre ar ray. Complementary centimetre-wave observations from the Very Large Ar ray and the Australia Telescope Compact Array, often obtained within w eeks of the millimetre-wave data, are also described. As a result of t hese measurements, the number of symbiotics observed at millimetre wav elengths has increased from 6 to 32, adding He 2-38, BI Cru, He 2-104, He 2-106 (= V835 Cen), He 2-171, He 2-176, AS 210, H 1-36, AS 289, K 3-9, CH Cyg, RR Tel and Z And to the list of those detected, We note t hat several sources are variable at millimetre wavelengths and we disc uss these objects individually, Additionally, we report 0.45-mm upper limits for HM Sge and V1016 Cyg - dusty symbiotics previously detected at 0.8-2.0 mm. We demonstrate that most of the symbiotics detected at centimetre wavelengths, including several with known binary periods, will fall above the detection threshold of new millimetre-wave bolomet er arrays, thus allowing us more stringently to test the standard bina ry models for symbiotic radio emission. In Paper II we shall describe our fits to the data presented here, concentrating on prototypical sys tems such as Z And and AG Peg.