[Adass-announce] Meeting update, Decoupling Civil Timekeeping from Earth Rotation

[Rob Seaman]

A reminder that the abstract deadline for the workshop "Decoupling Civil Timekeeping from Earth Rotation" (Exton, PA, 5-7 Oct 2011) is this Friday, August 19.  Click through to the very brief registration form (no payment in advance):

	http://futureofutc.org/register

Ceasing leap seconds will have a significant impact on the ADASS community, very likely including software that your institution, observatory, mission, survey or project relies upon.  Please consider participating.

More details:

The final vote will be in January 2012 at the Radiocommunications Assembly of the International Telecommunication Union in Geneva.  The Exton workshop will be the last chance to influence the decision while starting to plan for the Y2K-like fallout.  The International Earth Rotation Service has circulated the announcement:

	http://data.iers.org/products/2/14839/orig/message_191.txt

The program is shaping up nicely and will be released in a few weeks.  There will be a range of submissions from institutions such as the IAU, IERS and USNO as well as speakers from observatories as diverse as the Large Binocular Telescope, the Vatican and various astronautics projects.  And there will be a grab bag of other topics ranging from sundials and solar eclipses to celestial navigation and the 10,000 year clock.  We have just added another sponsor in the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

On the day following the meeting (10/7) there will be a talk by Ken Seidelmann (former director of astrometry at USNO) and tour of the analemmatic sundial at Longwood Gardens (http://bit.ly/omBqrE).  Ken provided its accurate calibration; the ITU's redefinition of Coordinated Universal Time would render calibration rather a moot issue for this and all sundials.

In addition to our American Scientist article (http://bit.ly/oKFHJT), the current issue of Metrologia is dedicated to the topic (http://iopscience.iop.org/0026-1394/48/4), and the British Royal Society is also hosting a meeting (http://royalsociety.org/events/UTC-for-21st-century/).

The issue has gotten very hot after a dozen years on the back burner.

Rob Seaman
National Optical Astronomy Observatory

Steve Allen
UCO/Lick Observatory