ORAC-DR is a generic data reduction pipeline infrastructure; it includes specific data processing recipes for a number of instruments. It is used at the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope, United Kingdom Infrared Telescope, AAT, and LCOGT. This pipeline runs at the JCMT Science Archive hosted by CADC to generate near-publication quality data products; the code has been in use since 1998.

SMURF reduces submillimeter single-dish continuum and heterodyne data. It is mainly targeted at data produced by the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope but data from other telescopes have been reduced using the package. SMURF is released as part of the bundle that comprises Starlink (ascl:1110.012) and most of the packages that use it. The two key commands are MAKEMAP for the creation of maps from sub millimeter continuum data and MAKECUBE for the creation of data cubes from heterodyne array instruments. The software can also convert data from legacy JCMT file formats to the modern form to allow it to be processed by MAKECUBE. SMURF is a core component of the ORAC-DR (ascl:1310.001) data reduction pipeline for JCMT.

SPECX is a general purpose line data reduction system. It can read and write FITS data cubes but has specialist support for the GSD format data from the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope. It includes commands to store and retrieve intermediate spectra in storage registers and perform the fitting and removal of polynomial, harmonic and Gaussian baselines.

SPECX can filter and edit spectra and list and display spectra on a graphics terminal. It is able to perform Fourier transform and power spectrum calculations, process up to eight spectra (quadrants) simultaneously with either the same or different center, and assemble a number of reduced individual spectra into a map file and contour or greyscale any plane or planes of the resulting cube.

Two versions of SPECX are distributed. Version 6.x is the VMS and Unix version and is distributed as part of the Starlink software collection. Version 7.x is a complete rewrite of SPECX distributed for Windows.

The CUPID package allows the identification and analysis of clumps of emission within 1, 2 or 3 dimensional data arrays. Whilst targeted primarily at sub-mm cubes, it can be used on any regularly gridded 1, 2 or 3D data. A variety of clump finding algorithms are implemented within CUPID, including the established ClumpFind (ascl:1107.014) and GAUSSCLUMPS (ascl:1406.018) algorithms. In addition, two new algorithms called FellWalker and Reinhold are also provided. CUPID allows easy inter-comparison between the results of different algorithms; the catalogues produced by each algorithm contains a standard set of columns containing clump peak position, clump centroid position, the integrated data value within the clump, clump volume, and the dimensions of the clump. In addition, pixel masks are produced identifying which input pixels contribute to each clump. CUPID is distributed as part of the Starlink (ascl:1110.012) software collection.

SURF reduces data from the SCUBA instrument from the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope. Facilities are provided for reducing all the SCUBA observing modes including jiggle, scan and photometry modes. SURF uses the Starlink environment (ascl:1110.012).

FLUXES calculates approximate topocentric positions of the planets and also integrated flux densities of five of them at several wavelengths. These provide calibration information at the effective frequencies and beam-sizes employed by the UKT14, SCUBA and SCUBA-2 receivers on the JCMT telescope based on Mauna Kea, Hawaii. FLUXES is part of the bundle that comprises the Starlink multi-purpose astronomy software package (ascl:1110.012).

ESP (Extended Surface Photometry) determines the photometric properties of galaxies and other extended objects. It has applications that detect flatfielding faults, remove cosmic rays, median filter images, determine image statistics and local background values, perform galaxy profiling, fit 2-D Gaussian profiles to galaxies, generate pie slice cross-sections of galaxies, and display profiling results. It is distributed as part of the Starlink software collection (ascl:1110.012).

JCMTDR reduces continuum on-the-fly mapping data obtained with UKT14 or the heterodyne instruments using the IFD on the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope. This program reduces archive data and heterodyne beam maps and was distributed as part of the Starlink software collection (ascl:1110.012).

COADD was used to reduce photometry and continuum data from the UKT14 instrument on the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope in the 1990s. The software can co-add multiple observations and perform sigma clipping and Kolmogorov-Smirnov statistical analysis. Additional information on the software is available in the JCMT Spring 1993 newsletter (large PDF).

Starlink Figaro is an independently-maintained fork of Figaro (ascl:1203.013) that runs in the Starlink software environment (ascl:1110.012). It is a general-purpose data reduction package targeted mainly at optical/IR spectroscopy. It uses the NDF data format and the ADAM libraries for parameters and messaging.

The Extensible N-Dimensional Data Format (NDF) stores bulk data in the form of N-dimensional arrays of numbers. It is typically used for storing spectra, images and similar datasets with higher dimensionality. The NDF format is based on the Hierarchical Data System (HDS) and is extensible; not only does it provide a comprehensive set of standard ancillary items to describe the data, it can also be extended indefinitely to handle additional user-defined information of any type. The NDF library is used to read and write files in the NDF format. It is distributed with the Starlink software (ascl:1110.012).

PALpy provides a Python interface to PAL, the positional Astronomy Library (ascl:1606.002), which is written in C. All arguments modified by the C API are returned and none are modified. The one routine that is different is palObs, which returns a simple dict that can be searched using standard Python. The keys to the dict are the short names and the values are another dict with keys name, long, lat and height.

The Hierarchical Data System (HDS) is a file-based hierarchical data system designed for the storage of a wide variety of information. It is particularly suited to the storage of large multi-dimensional arrays (with their ancillary data) where efficient access is needed. It is a key component of the Starlink software collection (ascl:1110.012) and is used by the Starlink N-Dimensional Data Format (NDF) library (ascl:1411.023).

HDS organizes data into hierarchies, broadly similar to the directory structure of a hierarchical filing system, but contained within a single HDS container file. The structures stored in these files are self-describing and flexible; HDS supports modification and extension of structures previously created, as well as functions such as deletion, copying, and renaming. All information stored in HDS files is portable between the machines on which HDS is implemented. Thus, there are no format conversion problems when moving between machines. HDS can write files in a private binary format (version 4), or be layered on top of HDF5 (version 5).

The GSD library reads data written in the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope GSD format. This format uses the General Single-Dish Data model and was used at the JCMT until 2005. The library provides an API to open GSD files and read their contents. The content of the data files is self-describing and the library can return the type and name of any component. The library is used by SPECX (ascl:1310.008), JCMTDR (ascl:1406.019) and COADD (ascl:1411.020). The SMURF (ascl:1310.007) package can convert GSD heterodyne data files to ACSIS format using this library.