X-RAY NOVAE: OPTICAL OBSERVATIONS AND ANALYSIS OF THE GENERAL PROPERTIES

Ph.D. dissertation presented at the Department of Astronomy of the University of Padua on February 28, 1997

After a long, long time I finally decided to translate my Ph.D. Thesis into english. Although I think that nobody is interested anymore in the results contained in it as they are outdated and, most of all, deal with an out-of-fashion astronomical subject, it seemed to me that it's even more useless to keep this work written in italian and closed in a drawer.
So, here is the translation of the whole Ph.D. Thesis. It is divided in 9 sections (an Introduction and 8 Chapters) plus 6 Appendices. The files are in Unix gzipped postscript format.

Front cover
Abstract - Introduction
Chapter 1. Mass loss and mass accretion
Chapter 2. Cataclysmic Variables and disk instability
Chapter 3. X-ray binary systems and Soft X-ray Transients
Chapter 4. X-ray Nova Ophiuchi 1993 (=GRS 1716-249, V2293 Oph)
Chapter 5. X-ray Nova Velorum 1993 (=GS 1009-45, MM Vel)
Chapter 6. X-ray Nova Scorpii 1994 (=GRO J1655-40)
Chapter 7. X-ray Nova Muscae 1991 (=GS 1124-68, GU Mus)
Chapter 8. Statistical analysis of Soft X-ray Transients
Appendix A. ELLCHI: a program for the simulation of superhump light curves
Appendix B. X-ray emission mechanisms
Appendix C. Time series analysis methods
Appendix D. Finding charts of SXTs
Appendix E. Constants and units used in this Thesis
Appendix F. Papers written during the Ph.D. course
Index

An up-to-date list of the main properties of these objects may be found here.

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