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
  1.9.1 The Poeckert and Marlborough Model
  1.9.2 The Disc Model
 1.10 Theoretical Interpretation of Disc Structure
  1.10.1 The Wind Compressed Disc Model
  1.10.2 Non-Radial Pulsations
  1.10.3 Wind Bi-Stability
  1.10.4 Viscous Discs
 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
  2.4.1 Bias Frames
  2.4.2 Dark Current
  2.4.3 Flat Fields
  2.4.4 Fringes
  2.4.5 Photon Noise
  2.4.6 Median Filtering
 2.5 Photometry
  2.5.1 Filters, Colours and Passbands
  2.5.2 Colour Indices
 2.6 Chapter 2 Summary
3 Existing Pipe-lines
 3.1 Reduction Software
  3.1.1 FITSIO
  3.1.2 The StarLink Collection
  3.1.3 SExtractor
  3.1.4 World Co-ordinate System Tools
 3.2 Existing Pipe-lines
  3.2.1 The ING WFS Pipe-line
  3.2.2 ORAC-DR
 3.3 Chapter 3 Summary
4 A Prototype Pipe-Line
 4.1 An Introduction to Pipe-lining
 4.2 The Prototype
  4.2.1 Pipe 1: Data Conversion
  4.2.2 Pipe 2: File Identification
  4.2.3 Pipe 3: Calibration and Normalisation
  4.2.4 Pipe 4: Image Scaling
  4.2.5 Pipe 5: Intensity Extraction
  4.2.6 Pipe 6: Object Identification
  4.2.7 Pipe 7: Colour Correction I
  4.2.8 Pipe 8: Airmass Corrections
  4.2.9 Pipe 9: Generating Magnitudes
  4.2.10 Pipe 10: Colour Correction II
 4.3 Prototype Evaluation
  4.3.1 Scientific Background
  4.3.2 Observations
  4.3.3 Model Fitting
 4.4 Problems with the Prototype PL
  4.4.1 Pipe 1: Pros and Cons
  4.4.2 Pipe 2: Pros and Cons
  4.4.3 Pipe 3: Pros and Cons
  4.4.4 Pipe 4: Pros and Cons
  4.4.5 Pipe 5: Pros and Cons
  4.4.6 Pipe 6: Pros and Cons
  4.4.7 Pipes 7 & 10: Pros and Cons
  4.4.8 Pipe 8: Pros and Cons
  4.4.9 Pipe 9: Pros and Cons
  4.4.10 Prototype Pipe-line Overview
5 The LT Pipe-line
 5.1 Pipe-line Construction
 5.2 The FITS Format
 5.3 Programming Intricacies
  5.3.1 Dynamic Memory Allocation
  5.3.2 Byte Swapping & Endianess
  5.3.3 Algorithm Construction
 5.4 Projections
 5.5 World Co-ordinate System
 5.6 The Online Liverpool Telescope Pipe-line
  5.6.1 FITS File Input/Output
  5.6.2 Basic Reduction
  5.6.3 Object detection
  5.6.4 FWHM
 5.7 The Off-line Liverpool Telescope Pipe-line
 5.8 The Off-line Pipe-line: Version 1
  5.8.1 FITS File Input/Output
  5.8.2 Object Detection
  5.8.3 Aperture Photometry
  5.8.4 World Canvas Construction
  5.8.5 Airmass curve creation
  5.8.6 Conclusion: Version 1
 5.9 The Off-line Pipe-line: Version 2
  5.9.1 Object Detection
  5.9.2 CFITSIO
  5.9.3 World Canvas Construction
  5.9.4 The LT Photometric Catalogue
  5.9.5 The Optimal Extraction Technique for Imaging Photometry
  5.9.6 Airmass curve creation
  5.9.7 Conclusion: Version 2
 5.10 The Off-line Pipe-line: Version 3
  5.10.1 WCSTools
  5.10.2 Airmass curve creation
  5.10.3 Modular Updates
 5.11 The Final Script
  5.11.1 Conclusion: Version 3
 5.12 Testing the Production Pipe-Line
 5.13 Critical Analysis
 5.14 Chapter 5 Summary
6 A Strömgren analysis I
 6.1 Introduction
  6.1.1 The Balmer Discontinuity
 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
  7.4.1 Br, Br11, Br18 and H
  7.4.2 Helium I 2.058m
  7.4.3 Spectral Type
  7.4.4 v olimits@sin(i) & olimits@sin(i)
 7.5 Conclusions
8 A Strömgren analysis II
 8.1 Introduction
 8.2 Methodology
 8.3 Results and Discussion
 8.4 Comparison of Methods
  8.4.1 Chapter 8 Summary
9 Concluding Remarks
 9.1 Be Stars
 9.2 PipeLine
Bibliography