Radial velocities & distances of carbon stars

These data together with others in the literature are used to study the differences between optical and CO millimetre (mm) observations for C-Miras and the necessary corrections to the optical velocities are derived in order to obtain the true radial velocities of the variables. The difference between absorption and emission-line velocities is also examined.

A particularly large difference (+30km/s) is found in the case of the H{alpha} line. A catalogue is given of 177 C-Miras with estimated distances and radial velocities. The distances are based on bolometric magnitudes derived in Paper I (Whitelock et al., 2006, Cat. <J/MNRAS/369/751>) using South African Astronomical Observatory (SAAO) observations or (for 60 of the stars) using non-SAAO photometry.