FITS standard

[Steve Allen]

In article <3537E51D.AD7C4BF8 at gsfc.nasa.gov>,
William Thompson  <William.T.Thompson.1 at gsfc.nasa.gov> wrote:
>That said, I agree with Jonathan that limiting the use of UTC to the Earth
>is a little odd.  I work with the SOHO satellite, which is ~5 light seconds
>out from the Earth, and we have no trouble relating the times of
>observations to UTC.

Unless I am misinterpreting, the entire argument of this posting is
relating to the 'DATE-OBS' keyword, whereas the "on earth" clause
pertains to the 'DATE    ' keyword.

>Perhaps the writers wanted to leave open the possibility that times might
>be converted to light arrival times at the solar system barycenter, or some
>other such scheme?

See in the appendix to the Y2K agreement that this is explicitly the
case for the 'DATE-OBS' keyword, but not for the 'DATE    ' keyword.
-- 
Steve Allen          UCO/Lick Observatory       Santa Cruz, CA 95064
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