1 STELLAR PROPERTIES 1.1 Spectral classification 1.2 Brightness and distance 1.2.1 Interstellar extinction 1.3 Stellar characteristics 1.3.1 Stellar interferometry 1.3.2 The effective temperature scale 1.3.3 Effective temperatures and angular diameters from the infrared flux method 1.3.4 Stellar chemical compositions 1.3.5 Bolometric corrections 1.3.6 Surface brightness relations 1.4 Limb darkening 1.4.1 Limb darkening laws 1.4.2 Limb darkening and eclipsing binaries 1.5 Gravity darkening 2 STELLAR EVOLUTION 2.1 The evolution of single stars 2.1.1 The formation of stars 2.1.2 Main sequence evolution 2.1.3 The evolution of low-mass stars 2.1.4 The evolution of intermediate-mass stars 2.1.5 The evolution of massive stars 3 THEORETICAL MODELLING OF STARS 3.1 Physical phenomena in models 3.1.1 Equation of state 3.1.2 Opacity 3.1.3 Energy transport 3.1.4 Convective core overshooting 3.1.5 Convective efficiency 3.1.6 The effect of stellar rotation 3.1.7 The effect of mass loss 3.1.8 The effect of diffusion 3.1.9 The effect of magnetic fields 3.2 Available theoretical stellar models 3.2.1 Hejlesen theoretical models 3.2.2 Granada theoretical models 3.2.3 Geneva theoretical models 3.2.4 Padova theoretical models 3.2.5 Cambridge theoretical models 3.2.6 Other theoretical models 3.3 Comments on stellar models 4 SPECTRAL CHARACTERISTICS OF STARS 4.1 Spectral lines 4.1.1 Spectral line broadening 4.2 Spectral features in stars 4.3 Stellar model atmospheres 4.3.1 The current status of model atmospheres 4.3.2 Convection in model atmospheres 4.3.3 The future of stellar model atmospheres 4.4 Calculation of theoretical stellar spectra 4.4.1 Microturbulence velocity 4.4.2 The UCLSYN spectral synthesis code 4.4.3 Abundance analysis of stellar spectra 4.5 Spectral peculiarity in stars 4.5.1 Metallic-lined stars 4.5.2 Chemically peculiar stars 5 MULTIPLE STARS 5.1 Dynamical characteristics of multiple stars 5.2 Binary star systems 5.3 Eclipsing binary star systems 6 DETACHED ECLIPSING BINARY STAR SYSTEMS 6.1 Comparison with theoretical stellar models 6.1.1 The methods of comparison 6.1.2 Further work 6.1.3 The difference between binary and single stars 6.2 Metal and helium abundances of nearby stars 6.3 Detached eclipsing binaries as standard candles 6.3.1 Distances from bolometric corrections 6.3.2 Distances from surface brightness relations 6.3.3 Distances from modelling of stellar spectral energy distributions 6.3.4 Recent results on the measurement of distance to eclipsing binaries 6.4 Detached eclipsing binaries in stellar systems 6.4.1 Literature results on detached eclipsing binaries in open clusters 7 TIDAL EFFECTS 7.1 Orbital circularization and rotational synchronism 7.1.1 The theory of Zahn 7.1.2 The theory of Tassoul & Tassoul 7.1.3 The theory of Press, Wiita & Smarr 7.1.4 The theory of Hut 7.1.5 Comparison with observations 7.1.6 Summary 7.2 Apsidal motion 7.2.1 Relativistic apsidal motion 7.2.2 Comparison with theoretical models 7.2.3 Comparison between observations and theory 8 OPEN CLUSTERS 8.1 Photometric characteristics of open clusters 8.2 Colour-magnitude diagrams of open clusters 8.3 Dynamical characteristics of open clusters 9 THE GALACTIC AND EXTRAGALACTIC DISTANCE SCALE 9.1 Parallax-based distances to stars 9.1.1 Trigonometrical parallax 9.1.2 Spectroscopic and photometric parallax 9.2 Distances to binary stars 9.2.1 Distances to visual binaries 9.2.2 Distances to eclipsing binaries 9.3 Variable stars as standard candles 9.3.1 delta Cepheid variables 9.3.2 RR Lyrae variables 9.3.3 Type Ia supernovae 9.4 Distances to stellar clusters 9.5 The Galactic and extragalactic distance scale 10 OBTAINING AND REDUCING ASTRONOMICAL DATA 10.1 Telescopes 10.1.1 Optical aberration 10.2 Charge-coupled devices (CCDs) 10.2.1 Advantages and disadvantages of CCDs 10.2.2 Reduction of CCD data 10.2.3 Debiassing CCD images 10.2.4 Flat-fielding CCD images 10.2.5 Photometry from CCD images 10.2.6 Aperture photometry 10.2.7 Point spread function photometry 10.2.8 Optimal photometry 10.3 Grating spectrographs 10.3.1 Reduction of CCD grating spectra 10.4 Echelle spectrographs 10.5 Observational procedures for the study of dEBs 10.5.1 CCD photometry 10.5.2 Grating spectroscopy 11 DETERMINATION OF SPECTROSCOPIC ORBITS 11.1 The equations of spectroscopic orbits 11.2 The fundamental concept of radial velocity 11.3 Radial velocities from observed spectra 11.3.1 Radial velocities from spectral lines 11.3.2 Radial velocities using one-dimensional cross-correlation 11.3.3 Directly observing cross-correlation functions 11.3.4 Radial velocities using two-dimensional cross-correlation (TODCOR) 11.3.5 Radial velocities using spectral disentangling 11.3.6 Radial velocities using Doppler tomography 11.4 Determination of spectroscopic orbits 11.4.1 SBOP -- Spectroscopic Binary Orbit Program 11.5 Determination of rotational velocities 12 Photometry 12.1 Photometric systems 12.1.1 Broad-band photometric systems 12.1.2 Broad-band photometric calibrations 12.1.3 Stromgren photometry 12.1.4 Stromgren photometric calibrations 12.1.5 Other photometric systems 13 LIGHT CURVE ANALYSIS OF DETACHED ECLIPSING BINARIES 13.1 Models for the simulation of detached eclipsing binary light curves 13.1.1 Rectification 13.1.2 EBOP -- Eclipsing Binary Orbit Program 13.1.3 WINK -- by D. B. Wood 13.1.4 WD -- the Wilson-Devinney code 13.1.5 Comparison between light curve codes 13.1.6 Other light curve fitting codes 13.1.7 Least-squares fitting algorithms 13.2 Solving light curves 13.2.1 Calculation of the orbital ephemeris 13.2.2 Initial conditions 13.2.3 Parameter determinacy and correlations 13.2.4 Final parameter values 13.3 Uncertainties in the parameters 13.3.1 The problem 13.3.2 The solutions 14 Abstracts of the publications arising from this PhD work 15 CONCLUSION 15.1 What this work can tell us 15.1.1 The observation and analysis of detached eclipsing binaries 15.1.2 Studying stellar clusters using detached eclipsing binaries 15.1.3 Theoretical evolutionary models and detached eclipsing binaries 15.2 Further work 15.2.1 Further study of the detached eclipsing binaries in this work 15.2.2 Other detached eclipsing binaries in open clusters 15.2.3 Detached eclipsing binaries in globular clusters 15.2.4 Detached eclipsing binaries in other galaxies 15.2.5 Detached eclipsing binaries in clusters containing delta Cepheids 15.2.6 Detached eclipsing binaries which are otherwise interesting 15.2.7 Detached eclipsing binaries found by large-scale variability studies
Last modified: in 2007 John Southworth (Keele University, UK)