[fitsbits] Re: leap second alert

[Steve Allen]

On Fri 1999-12-17T10:11:37 +0000, Patrick Wallace hath writ:
> On Thu, 16 Dec 1999, Steve Allen wrote:
> > 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.
>
> No it didn't.  That's why I proposed adopting either TAI or TT at
> the time.

Yes, it did, for the sake of the DATE keyword alone.

I can't write a program for my computer which will cause it to emit a
reliable value of TAI or TT -- at least, not unless I make it a rather
savvy network-aware program which can several times annually navigate
its way through a maze of firewalls, surf the supposedly-reliable URIs
that give leap second information, and then update its own database.

Bill Pence and the FITSIO team haven't managed to do that either.

I'll wager they're rather glad that the DATE keyword was specified as
UTC.

--
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