Near-infrared spectra of some symbiotic stars

Most of the near-infrared spectra of symbiotic stars in the existing literature have been obtained at low to moderate resolutions, resulting in the blending of many interesting spectral features such as the CO bands. Although isolated cases of higher resolution studies exist, the sample of such stars is small. We have started a programme to obtain medium resolution (R similar to 1000) near-infrared (1-2.5 mum) spectra of symbiotic stars and related objects in order to obtain a homogeneous set of data for studying the red giant components in these systems. We present our first set of data here.