Chapter 5
The Production Liverpool Telescope Pipe-line

Abstract
Outlined here is the pipe-line that will be implemented on the Liverpool Telescope - the production pipe-line. Lessons learnt from the prototype PL and knowledge gained from both the telescope builders and telescope software developers (inc. robotic, instrument and telescope control-software - encompassed here as CS) have been integrated to write a software package which is unique in its application to the LT and robust in nature. This pipe-line has been used to reduce the Be star data presented in Chapter 6 and Chapter 8. The construction and evolution of the LT PL is discussed in this chapter. Each substantial new version is detailed and the reasons for its improvement given. To enable efficient coding a dataset is required to test the PL, the data chosen for this task is the low mass star sample (see Steele and Howells2001a,b, Chapter 4) used when writing the prototype PL. This also allowed direct comparison of results between the prototype’s results, acknowledged to be correct through peer-review, and the production PL. In order to understand the construction it is first necessary to understand the requisite parts of the PL. The following sections aim to explain these formal parts1.
It is allowed on all Hands, that the primitive Way of breaking Eggs before we eat them, was upon the larger End: But his present Majesty’s Grand-father, while he was a Boy, going to eat an Egg, and breaking it according to the ancient Practice, happened to cut one of his Fingers. Whereupon the Emperor his Father, published an Edict, commanding all his Subjects, upon great Penalties, to break the smaller End of their Eggs. The People so highly resented this Law, that our Histories tell us, there have been six Rebellions raised on that Account;. . . It is computed that eleven Thousand Persons have, at several Times, suffered Death, rather than submit to break their Eggs at the smaller End. Many hundred large Volumes have been published upon this Controversy: But the Books of the Big-Endians have been long forbidden,. . .
Jonathan Swift (1726)