Astrophysics of symbiotic stars with small telescopes

Symbiotic stars comprise a cool giant and a white dwarf (WD) on, typically, a few years orbit. The white dwarf accretes from the giant's wind, heats up to 1 2 x 10(5) K, ionizes the circumbinary environment, and is subject to occasional outbursts. The presence of physically different sources of radiation and particles in the system, diversing extremely in temperatures, produces a complex composite spectrum from X-rays to radio wavelengths. In my presentation I will introduce some main points of the research of symbiotic stars based on the multicolour photometry carried out by small telescopes of the Astronomical Institute of the Slovak Academy of Sciences.