A LaTeX template for an

astronomy/astrophysics thesis1
Andreas Spole
August 13, 2015

1 This

is just a very basic cover page produced by LaTeX when the thesis is done you can
get a more formal cover page from Eva Jurlander.

(this page will contain some more official information in the final version)

Abstract
The abstract is a short summary describing the content of the main text. This should
give enough information about the contents to decide for the intended audience whether
further reading will be useful. The size should be about half a page, best written at the
end, after most of the thesis is written.

Popul
arvetenskaplig beskrivning
This is meant to be popular introduction to and description of your thesis, preferably written in Swedish. The name is unfortunately misleading. It is not a summary but mainly an
introduction to what you have done. A good idea is to write this when you are about one
third through the time allotted for the thesis work.
Especially important here are the context of your project and why this is an interesting
project to do. This should be about half a page as well.

Contents

List of Figures

List of Tables

Chapter 1
Introduction
This document is meant as a technical tutorial for writing an astronomy/astrophysics thesis
in LaTeX. Detailed rules about the contents of the thesis (Bachelors thesis or Masters
thesis) can be found at the course websites.

1.1

A section in Chapter 1

1.1.1

A subsection in Chapter 1

Subsubsections are not numbered!

Chapter 2
Results
Chapters always start on a new page. The chapter names in the template are just suggestions. You can name your chapters differently and add more if needed.

2.1

Code

When we write down computer code we might want it to look just like it does in the editor
(using a fixed with font). This is done using the verbatim environment.

PROGRAM myfortran
IMPLICIT NONE
REAL*8 mag(20)
REAL flux(20)
INTEGER nstar
WRITE(*,*) "This program calculates a magnitude"
READ(*,*) flux(1)
mag(1)=-2.5*LOG(flux(1))

2.2

Figures

Figures are of course very important in the thesis. Make sure that your figures have thick
lines that stand out in the printed version, that the fonts are not too small, that the
axes are labelled and explained and that colours are distinguishable in a black and white
printout as well (this is helpful for the not insignificant fraction of the population who are
colorblind).
5

2.3. TABLES

CHAPTER 2. RESULTS

Figure 2.1: This colour-magnitude diagram shows the giant branch of the Draco dwarf
spheroidal galaxy as seen in the Stromgren filter system (also known as uvby). Make sure
that the lines are thick enough to read and that your plotting program produces nice
postscript fonts.

2.3

Tables

This section contains a table which shows the most basic elements and a simple layout. The
table can be seen in Table ??. Make sure to make your labeling system easy. Maybe table:1
is not so smart what if you move the table somewhere else, and it is not any longer the
first table or you add a table before this one. A label like table:varstars is much better.
Table 2.1: This is a table of variable stars
Id of star
I
V Var.?
1234
15.6 17.3
No
5677
13.4 12.3 Yes

Here we managed to place the table directly in the text (using the !h option). Generally we should let LaTeX control the positions of figures and tables if you are unhappy
with their placement then try to move them around in the raw text or experiment with !h
and !t.

2.4

Equations

Writing mathematical formulae in LaTeX is not always so easy at first. But it does look
good! This is one of the main reasons why we use LaTeX instead of Word. There are
several environments that we can use. If I want simply to have a small equation or some
expression in the text I can just do $ x+a \cdot b= f(x) $. Which, when LaTeXed,
gives us the formula x + a b = f (x).
If we want an equation by itself, we just add one more $ at each side:
g(x, y) = sin(x) + 10 log(y 20 102x )
It is also possible to use an environment especially for equations. Remember that equations
should be integrated in the flow of the text, even if they are on separate lines. Therefore
we should use punctuation in equations as well, for example in the equation which reads
n
X

(x x)2 +

x2 + y 3 = h(x, y) .

k=i

(2.1)

2.5. THE LIST ENVIRONMENT

CHAPTER 2. RESULTS

Remember that the equation environment does not like empty lines. This is the same
in table, by the way. You can do many more things in the maths-mode. If you are going
to write lots of equations you will learn it very quickly.

2.5

The list environment

If you want to make good looking lists, short or long, LaTeX can do it for you.
This is the first entry
and the second one
lets go down one level
and stay there
And one more
very deep
But you can also do other types of lists. For example with numbers. Very useful as
you cna refer to them later.
1. First entry
2. Second entry
3. Third entry
(a) First entry
(b) Second entry
And you can mix the listings
like this

Chapter 3
Conclusions
3.1

Cross-referencing

LaTeX is very nice because it can help you to refer to the right table, figure, item section
or page. Just remember that you need to compile with latex or pdflatex twice (!) before
it has updated all the cross references. This is also true for references (see Sect. ??).
In item ?? on page ?? you can find some important information that was not covered
in Eq. (??) or in Table ??. That covers the most important references.

3.2

References

You also need to cite all the thick and good papers that you have read during your thesis
work. There are several ways. Here we will use the natbib style as that one is the one
that most resembles the way we write references in astronomy journal papers.
You can add the references in a so called bibtex file. This file contains all the information LaTeX needs about a single paper in order to make an entry in the reference list
and to write the correct reference inside your text. You can go to ADS and download
references and add them to the bibtex file. Click on the link marked Bibtex entry for
this abstract and paste the entry into the bibtex file. You can then compile the document with latex thesis template, bibtex thesis template, latex thesis template,
latex thesis template.
Alternatively we can add a list of bibitems directly in the LaTeX file. On ADS, click
instead on the link marked Preferred format for this abstract and paste the bibitem into
the reference list. This method is included in the template but is commented out. If you use
bibitems then you can compile the document by simply typing latex thesis template
twice.

3.3. SPELLING

CHAPTER 3. CONCLUSIONS

Both methods allow you to cite the important paper by ? which was based on earlier
work (?).

3.3

Spelling

Remember to check the text carefully for typos and grammatical errors. You can use a tool
like Spell Right for this (http://nile.lub.lu.se/loDownload/101/Spellright.htm)
but note that you must paste the text into a Word file in order to feed it into Spell Right.

Acknowledgements
There is no acknowledgements section in the regular LaTeX, but you can easily make one
yourself.

Appendix A
This is an appendix
You can put long mathematical derivations or tables in appendices.

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Appendix B
This is another appendix

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