[Adass-announce] Meeting of interest to the ADASS community

[Rob Seaman]

The chairs of "Decoupling Civil Timekeeping from Earth Rotation" encourage members of the ADASS community to participate in this upcoming meeting in Exton, PA (near Philadelphia) on October 5-6, 2011:

	http://futureofutc.org/

The final vote on the so-called "leap second" issue will be in January 2012 at an assembly of the International Telecommunication Union in Geneva.  This will be the last chance to influence the decision while starting to plan for the Y2K-like fallout.

Redefining UTC would have wide-ranging implications for astronomical systems, software and science.  For example, a grep of IRAF returns 500+ files containing the tokens UT or GMT, while the similar Y2K inventory was fewer than 150 hits.  A review of time-keeping dependencies in the code base of other astronomical software or systems would make a welcome abstract submission.

If WWV and NTP and GPS no longer provide Universal Time, a new parallel delivery infrastructure will also be required - likely to be deployed and operated by the astronomical community (us).  Time-related astronomical metadata will require a new and coherent consensus.  For example, should FITS DATE-OBS be UTC or rather actual Universal Time?  GUIs and parameters sets will need to clarify whether a quantity is UTC or "real-UT" and whether both are now needed for a particular application.  For astronomical software that is DUT1-aware, a new source of same will be required and all such code will have to be vetted for values greater than 0.9 seconds.

For more details, the International Earth Rotation Service has circulated the announcement:

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

Luminaries like Daniel Gambis (who oversees the leap seconds) and Ken Seidelmann (editor of the Explanatory Supplement to the Astronomical Almanac) will be speaking.  There will be a presentation on the architecture of the 10,000 year clock (http://longnow.org/clock/) by one of their project engineers.

Several of us also have an article in the current issue of American Scientist magazine:

	http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/feature/2011/4/the-future-of-time-utc-and-the-leap-second
	(open access preprint: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1106.3141)

This issue is obscure.  It is not insignificant. 

Rob Seaman
National Optical Astronomy Observatory

Steve Allen
UCO/Lick Observatory
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1) Also, please click through and complete the very brief IERS survey form:

	http://hpiers.obspm.fr/eop-pc/index.php?index=questionnaire

However, not responding is better than registering "no opinion".  The time has come to form an opinion.


2) That the Royal Society has their own meeting in the UK the week before the Paris ADASS should be taken as an indication of the gravity of the situation:

	http://royalsociety.org/events/UTC-for-21st-century/

Wrangling an invitation would provide a good excuse for ADASS attendees to take the Chunnel in between.