On Sun 2006-01-08T12:41:21 +0100, Poul-Henning Kamp hath writ:
> It sounds to me like BIPM ought to make an Internet service available
> which will deliver UT1 to astronomers in a timely fashion ?
That would have to be the IERS.
> Something as simple as
>
> finger ut1_at_bipm.fr
>
> Or even just a more stringent formatting of the bulletins on the ftp
> site could do it as well.
I do not believe that any of the IERS bureaus have internet
connections and servers which are anywhere near robust and redundant
enough to make that a reliable service.
There is a lot that could and should be done.
The USNO branch of the IERS issues two files with predictions about
earth orientation every Thursday.
It is not widely known that last July on the Thursday following the
Daniel Gambis announcement one of those files acknowledged the leap
second we just experienced, and the other did not.
This was fixed with a new release which happened by Friday.
(Despite some NTP servers which reportedly still have not acknowledged
the leap second, I think the overall indications are that the NTP
network did better than 50 %.)
The existing IERS system is dysfunctional.
--
Steve Allen <sla_at_ucolick.org> WGS-84 (GPS)
UCO/Lick Observatory Natural Sciences II, Room 165 Lat +36.99858
University of California Voice: +1 831 459 3046 Lng -122.06014
Santa Cruz, CA 95064 http://www.ucolick.org/~sla/ Hgt +250 m
Received on Sun Jan 08 2006 - 07:17:57 PST