The difficult way

Given the lack of detailed documentation on ORAC-DR it is difficult to not see it as a black-box. Most people who use it is as their preferred method of data reduction are likely to have spent some time with somebody who knows a lot about it, or to have dug down into the primitive code to see what is actually done on a step by step basis. The new xoracdr interface will to some extent make the reduction less opaque, it can step you through the recipes. However most astronomers, being by nature suspicious and distrustful, are likely to want to reduce their data at least once in a step by step manner. The rest of the cookbook outlines how to do this. It is by no means a waste of space for the ORAC-DR user, ORAC-DR calls on the SURF routines to reduce the data.

First log in on a unix workstation and create a directory where you want to store your reduced data. Next type

% surf
% kappa
% figaro
% convert

This starts up the SCUBA software and the main Starlink packages needed for the data reduction.

The next thing you will need to do is to find the data and create logs of your observing run, so that you know what scan numbers to reduce.