Alan Bridger (UK Astronomy Technology Centre), Frossie Economou (Joint Astronomy Centre), Malcolm J. Currie, Gillian Wright, Min Tan, Alan Pickup (UK Astronomy Technology Centre), Andy Adamson (University of Central Lancashire)
Reference URL: http://www.roe.ac.uk/abwww/orac/index.html
The Observatory Reduction and Acquisition Control (ORAC) project is in the process of replacing all existing software which interacts with the users at UKIRT (the United Kingdom Infrared telescope). This system will provide UKIRT with an observation-preparation tool, an observatory control system (with optional automatic scheduling) and a data reduction pipeline. It is flexible and extensible, and will be used with all future UKIRT instruments, including the mid-infrared imager-spectrometer Michelle. Software for the Michelle project is being developed alongside ORAC and will provide other general facilities such as data storage and a quick-look display. The modest effort allocation to ORAC, coupled with other considerations, led to both projects considering significant reuse of existing software, both external and internal. Here we give a brief overview of the projects and discuss the long-standing trade-off between reusing existing code and writing software specific to our requirements.