Realizing software longevity over a system's lifetime

Kyle Lanclos; William T. S. Deich; Robert I. Kibrick; Steven L. Allen; John Gates

doi:10.1117/12.857653

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19 July 2010 Realizing software longevity over a system's lifetime

Kyle Lanclos, William T. S. Deich, Robert I. Kibrick, Steven L. Allen, John Gates

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Proceedings Volume 7740, Software and Cyberinfrastructure for Astronomy; 77403E (2010) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.857653
Event: SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation, 2010, San Diego, California, United States

Abstract

A successful instrument or telescope will measure its productive lifetime in decades; over that period, the technology behind the control hardware and software will evolve, and be replaced on a per-component basis. These new components must successfully integrate with the old, and the difficulty of that integration depends strongly on the design decisions made over the course of the facility's history. The same decisions impact the ultimate success of each upgrade, as measured in terms of observing efficiency and maintenance cost. We offer a case study of these critical design decisions, analyzing the layers of software deployed for instruments under the care of UCO/Lick Observatory, including recent upgrades to the Low Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (LRIS) at Keck Observatory in Hawaii, as well as the Kast spectrograph, Lick Adaptive Optics system, and Hamilton spectrograph, all at Lick Observatory's Shane 3-meter Telescope at Mt. Hamilton. These issues play directly into design considerations for the software intended for use at the next generation of telescopes, such as the Thirty Meter Telescope. We conduct our analysis with the future of observational astronomy infrastructure firmly in mind.

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Kyle Lanclos, William T. S. Deich, Robert I. Kibrick, Steven L. Allen, and John Gates "Realizing software longevity over a system's lifetime", Proc. SPIE 7740, Software and Cyberinfrastructure for Astronomy, 77403E (19 July 2010); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.857653

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