  The total mass of distant star clusters is often derived from the virial
theorem, using line-of-sight velocity dispersion measurements and half-light
radii. Although most stars form in binary systems, this is mostly ignored when
interpreting the observations. The components of binary stars exhibit orbital
motion, which may increase the measured velocity dispersion, and may therefore
result in a dynamical mass overestimation. In this paper we quantify the effect
of neglecting the binary population on the derivation of the dynamical mass of
a star cluster. We simulate star clusters numerically, and study the dependence
of the derived dynamical mass on the properties of the binary population. We
find that the presence of binaries plays a crucial role for very sparse
clusters with a stellar density comparable to that of the field star population
(~0.1 stars/pc3), as the velocity dispersion is fully dominated by the binary
orbital motion. For such clusters, the dynamical mass may overestimate the true
mass by up to an order of magnitude. For very dense clusters (>10^7 stars/pc3),
binaries do not affect the dynamical mass estimation significantly. For
clusters of intermediate density (0.1-10^7 stars/pc3), the dynamical mass can
be overestimated by 10-100%, depending on the properties of the binary
population.
