Astron. Astrophys. 350, 491-496 (1999)

4. Conclusions

We have reported on lunar occultation observations of 20 binary stars carried out in the near-IR. A companion has been detected for the first time around 7 sources, one of them being in fact a triple star; additionally, our observations confirm previous reports on binarity and provide additional information in the infrared for other 7 stars. We do not detect a previously known or suspected companion around 4 stars, and we provide a possible explanation in each of the cases. Finally, two of the stars are visual binaries.

Summing up the results presented here with those reported earlier in Paper I, II and III, a total of 58 binary stars have been observed so far in the course of our LO program. The stars reported were extracted from a sample of 185 lunar occultations, yielding a binary frequency in our (biased) target lists of 11%, which is consistent with similar statistics described in our previous papers.

© European Southern Observatory (ESO) 1999

Online publication: October 4, 1999
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