NEAR-INFRARED PHOTOMETRY OF A SAMPLE OF IRAS POINT SOURCES

This paper presents the J, H, K, L, M photometry of 516 sources pertai ning to a sample of 787 sources which has been extracted from the IRAS Point Source Catalogue in order to study the late stages of stellar e volution and the concomitant phenomena of mass loss. Three different c lassifications of these sources based on broadband photometry and IRAS low resolution spectra are given, and the distributions of the source s in terms of these classifications are presented. A sub-sample of pec uliar sources, believed to have recently undergone a helium flash, has been isolated using the K - L, [12-mu-m] - [25-mu-m] colour diagram. Some objects worth further studies are also mentioned.