[fitsbits] Re: leap second alert

[Arnold Rots]

Steve Allen wrote:
> On Thu 1999-12-16T20:05:37 +0000, Rob Seaman hath writ:
> 
> > First - what does astronomy need?  (And therefore what must FITS support?)
> 
> FITS would surely like to be able to name a timescale which will be
> widely available far into the future.  Two years ago UTC looked like
> the right thing.  So long as something called UTC remains widely
> available I doubt that the FITS Y2K agreement need be amended because
> its appendix provides for specification of timescale when necessary.

The FITS Y2k agreement did not embrace UTC.  The appendix provides a
suggested convention for handling and identifying timescales.
The default there is UTC because most existing products used
implicitly UTC.  The only exception was the DATE keyword which was
mandated to be in UTC.  The rationale for that was that since it
reflects the time a file (HDU) is created, this requirement
synchronizes the DATE value with the file creation date generated by
most computer operating systems.

> 
> 
> --
> Steve Allen          UCO/Lick Observatory       Santa Cruz, CA 95064
> sla at ucolick.org      Voice: +1 831 459 3046     http://www.ucolick.org/~sla
> PGP: 1024/E46978C5   F6 78 D1 10 62 94 8F 2E    49 89 0E FE 26 B4 14 93

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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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