[fitsbits] Re: leap second alert

[Arnold Rots]

Our procedure is to download ftp://maia.usno.navy.mil/ser7/tai-utc.dat
twice a year - in March and September.  This file is kept in a
reference data directory accessed by all time conversion code.

  - Arnold

Steve Allen wrote:
> 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

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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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