1.11 Thesis Overview

This thesis concerns itself with two main objectives

• Developing a method to separate the 3 components (stellar, circumstellar and interstellar) of the observed flux received from a Be star.
• Developing an autonomous data reduction system for use on the Liverpool Robotic Telescope, which will be used in future Be star observations.

Chapter 2 discusses the need for automated data reduction and shows that the need for such a system is not only complimentary to observational astrophysics but is rapidly becoming a necessity. It goes on to detail the methods used in data reduction.

Chapter 3 investigates current automated reduction systems, that are generally still in their infancy.

In Chapter 4 a prototype reduction system is designed and implemented using existing software products to explore the process of automation. The prototype is used to reduce a data set of low mass star observations, the results are then compared to existing theoretical models.

Chapter 5 uses the lessons learned from Chapter 4 in the construction of a production data reduction system that will be put to use on the Robotic Liverpool Telescope. This system is then used to reduce Be star data used in this thesis.

Chapter 6 presents new Strömgren data and explores the possibility of that an optical excess exists and can be separated from the intrinsic stellar flux using an existing method. It also introduces the “representative sample” of Be stars which is used as the core stellar sample throughout this thesis.

Chapter 7 presents new JHK data of the representative sample and devises a new separation technique. Existing complimentary representative sample data is then used to investigate a range of correlations in the sample.

Chapter 8 revisits the Strömgren data of Chapter 6 to try to improve the results obtained by using the separation technique devised in Chapter 7.

Finally in Chapter 9 the conclusions of the work are presented and suggestions for future work made.