ORAC, the Observatory Reduction and Acquisition Control project for UKIRT (link opens in a new window), had the aim of increasing the observing efficiency and publication rate of UKIRT. It has since been expanded for use on JCMT (link opens in a new window).
ORAC consists of four main systems:
- A new observation preparation tool that allows astronomers to prepare their observations in detail before travelling to the telescope and therefor save time at the telescope.
- An observatory control system for efficient observing enabling more observations (on average) to be done per night.
- A pipelined automatic data reduction system that keeps up with the rate of data acquisition.
- A queue scheduled observing system.
This purely software project is a joint venture with the Joint Astronomy Centre software group. Delivery was phased starting in late 1999 and a fully operational system was released in Autumn 2000.
For more technical information on ORAC please visit the ORAC project pages (link opens in a new window).
