A Photometric Study of Selected Near-Contact Binary Systems

The light curves of 16 near-contact binaries (10 from published observations and 6 from our own observations) from the catalog by Shaw (1994) have been solved in a homogeneous manner in order to determine their subclass and to extract their absolute elements. The evolutionary state of the near-contact class of intaracting binaries as it is determined from these elements shows that in general these systems are more evolved than the W UMa type contact binaries.