Astronomy, like many scientific disciplines, is traversing uncertain
times. During these times, communication in all its guises is even
more important than usual. For instance, I just returned from the
Astronomical Telescopes and Instruments conference of the SPIE
(International Society for Optical Engineering). One of the projects
that received a lot of attention and produced a lot of presentations
was TMT, the Thirty Meter Telescope project. Happened to rummaging
through our web pages and came across this little communication from
the TMT Project Manager:
http://www.tmt.org/tmt/pmcorner-005
The idea of discussing UTC issues at some conference has previously
been floated several times. What about a conceptual design review
for any proposed changes to the UTC standard or to timekeeping
practices in general? These certainly affect more people than any
single telescope, no matter how large. Usually a CDR leads to a
Preliminary Design Review and ultimately to simply a Design Review,
but any DR at all would seem refreshing...
Rob
NOAO
Received on Mon Jun 05 2006 - 11:57:01 PDT