A pipeline for the analysis of stellar spectra

Abstract

Understanding the formation and evolution of our galaxy, the Milky Way, has been an ongoing process, which with the development of large-scale surveys has picked up considerable pace. Together with these new surveys, pipelines have been constructed which allow for the rapid and automatic processing of this wealth of new data. These codes are able to turn raw data files into tables of stellar parameters and chemical abundances in far less time than if they were analysed by hand. The results from these surveys open new windows on to the history of our galaxy and other disk galaxies. In this thesis, we present the development of a new pipeline, the STellAR Parameter AND Abundances pipeline (STARPANDA), which is able to rapidly derive stellar parameters, CNO abundances and other elemental abundances by utilising measurements of spectral features in both observed and synthetic spectra. We take the observed spectra, synthetic spectra and line lists employed by the APOGEE survey and produce new values for the stellar parameters, CNO abundances and Al abundances of the APOGEE stars. We then compare our results with those achieved by the APOGEE pipeline.