The Design of an Automated Data Analysis System for Robotic Telescopes and its Application to Be Stars

Declaration
Abstract
Publications
Contents
  List of Tables
  List of Figures

1 Introduction
 1.1 B stars
 1.2 What is a Be star?
 1.3 The Distribution of Circumstellar Material
 1.4 The Infrared Excess of Be stars
 1.5 How do Stars Lose their Mass?
 1.6 Velocity Structure of Discs
 1.7 V/R Variations
 1.8 Polarisation
 1.9 Empirically Derived Models
 1.10 Theoretical Interpretation of Disc Structure
 1.11 Thesis Overview

2 Theory of Automated Data Reduction
 2.1 Why Automate Data Management?
 2.2 The Liverpool Telescope
 2.3 Charge-Coupled-Devices
 2.4 Data Reduction
 2.5 Photometry
 2.6 Chapter 2 Summary

3 Existing Pipe-lines
 3.1 Reduction Software
 3.2 Existing Pipe-lines
 3.3 Chapter 3 Summary

4 A Prototype Pipe-Line
 4.1 An Introduction to Pipe-lining
 4.2 The Prototype
 4.3 Prototype Evaluation
 4.4 Problems with the Prototype PL

5 The LT Pipe-line
 5.1 Pipe-line Construction
 5.2 The FITS Format
 5.3 Programming Intricacies
 5.4 Projections
 5.5 World Co-ordinate System
 5.6 The Online Liverpool Telescope Pipe-line
 5.7 The Off-line Liverpool Telescope Pipe-line
 5.8 The Off-line Pipe-line: Version 1
 5.9 The Off-line Pipe-line: Version 2
 5.10 The Off-line Pipe-line: Version 3
 5.11 The Final Script
 5.12 Testing the Production Pipe-Line
 5.13 Critical Analysis
 5.14 Chapter 5 Summary

6 A Strömgren analysis I
 6.1 Introduction
 6.2 The Theory
 6.3 The observations
 6.4 Strömgren Data Reduction
 6.5 Methodology
 6.6 Results
 6.7 Conclusion

7 IR Photometry & Continuum Excess
 7.1 Introduction
 7.2 The Observations
 7.3 Separating Interstellar Reddening and Circumstellar Excess
 7.4 Results
 7.5 Conclusions

8 A Strömgren analysis II
 8.1 Introduction
 8.2 Methodology
 8.3 Results and Discussion
 8.4 Comparison of Methods

9 Concluding Remarks
 9.1 Be Stars
 9.2 PipeLine

Bibliography