[fitsbits] Re: leap second alert

[Arnold Rots]

And then there is TT as well.
>From my perspective only TAI and TT are relevant; and it's too bad
these two can't be synchronized.
For astronomical data one needs TT; and TAI is obviously essential
because that's how time is kept.
Times in UTC and GPS are a bit of a nuisance but we can convert from
and to them, if people insist; but I'd be happy to junk them.

It seems to me that the question is really a relevant one for those
who need noon to be really noon.  However, considering that almost
everywhere in the world the sun isn't due south (or north) at the
local time zone's noon (Western Europe is quite a bit off; even more
in summer), it appears that people are able to live quite happily with
a clock that is off from solar time by a considerable amount.

I'd be in favor of a universal reset - align GPS, UTC, and TAI all
with TT and have a single terrestrial time scale.  Then we can worry
about TCG next ;-)

  - Arnold

Steve Allen wrote:
> In article <833go4$e6m at post.gsfc.nasa.gov>,
> William Thompson <thompson at orpheus.nascom.nasa.gov> wrote:
> 
> >communicated to the address below.  The simplest reservation is, if UTC-TAI
> >were to remain at a fixed value, why have UTC at all?  Why not simply use TAI?
> 
> Indeed.  We already have GPS time, which is a constant-offset variant
> of TAI, whose transmission format supplies the necessary extra info:
> the difference between UTC and GPS.
> 
> At face value this proposal would seem to create yet another atomic
> timescale which differs by only a few seconds, confuses the
> nomenclature, and fobs off the responsibility for implementing a
> global leap hour onto our descendents sometime between the years 3000
> and 4000.
> -- 
> Steve Allen          UCO/Lick Observatory       Santa Cruz, CA 95064
> sla at ucolick.borg     Voice: +1 831 459 3046     FAX (don't): +1 831 459 5244
> WWW: http://www.ucolick.borg/~sla               PGP public keys:  see WWW
> Junk mail is irrelevant -- my return address has been assimilated.

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Arnold H. Rots                                Chandra X-ray Science Center
Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory                tel:  +1 617 496 7701
60 Garden Street, MS 81                              fax:  +1 617 495 7356
Cambridge, MA 02138                             arots at head-cfa.harvard.edu
USA                                     http://hea-www.harvard.edu/~arots/
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