NEW BINARY STARS DISCOVERED BY LUNAR OCCULTATIONS

We report on a total of 20 occultation events of 16 binary sources, ob served in the near infrared in the course of routine lunar occultation programs at the TIRGO and Calar Alto observatories. The results consi st in either discoveries of new binaries, or in re-observations of kno wn or suspected binaries where only incomplete information was availab le. This paper is the third in a series of similar reports (see Richic hi et al. 1994 and 1996, hereafter Papers I and II). For the following 9 stars, we detected a companion for the first time: SAO 160179, DO 1 0593, DO 11286, SAO 96515, SAO 96547, SAO 164323, SAO 164360, SAO 1643 71, SAO 128391. Of these, SAO 96515 was a suspected lunar occultation binary. while SAO 160179 and SAO 96547 (as well as SAO 146402 below) b elong also to wider binary pairs. For the following 4 stars, we confir m previous reports of binarity: SAO 161153, SAO 95419, SAO 146402, SAO 96810; for these stars, our IR measurements complement existing visua l information: Finally, in the case of the three stars SAO 93777, SAO 162050 and SAO 95456, a companion had also been previously observed or suspected, but we could not detect it. Our negative detection in thes e cases provides a constraint on the characteristics of the companion. The projected separations in our positive results cover a range of tw o orders of magnitude, from approximate to 0.'' 006 to approximate to 0.'' 6.