In the March newsletter of the American Astronomical Society is
a letter from McCarthy, Fliegel, and Nelson promoting UTC without
leap seconds.
In the March issue of The Compendium, the quarterly journal of
the North American Sundial Society, is a note about leap seconds.
Dare any inferences be drawn from the letter in the AAS newsletter?
McCarthy works at the USNO branch of the IERS which produces the
near-real-time bulletin A. Leap seconds are announced (currently by
Daniel Gambis) by l'Observatoire de Paris branch of the IERS in the
semi-annual bulletin C.
Dare this be taken as an indication that, for those who care about
earth rotation, the USNO believes the contribution of l'OBSPM as seen
in Bulletin C could just as well be replaced by a suitably damped
filtering of the Bulletin A data? And that, for those who do not care
about earth rotation (presumably the majority of the population of the
planet), the USNO believes the role of l'OBSPM for controlling civil
time is irrelevant?
--
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
Received on Fri Mar 25 2005 - 08:15:49 PST