Please report in UT

"Carsten A. Arnholm" wrote in message
...
Mike Fitterman wrote:
This really is a must. For folks that live in the US "CST" can mean
more than one thing. It can be confusing as hell for people who
live
outside the US to figure out what our timezones map to.

I subscribe to that. I live in Norway and I don't know what CST
represents,
and most people I know don't know that either. One really cannot
expect all
other people to look up all other time zone designations around the
world
(at least not if you expect them to get it right). I use UT all the
time,
and also avoid the troublesome summertime ("daylight saving time")
issues.

That's fine if you live within a couple of hours of UT, but you have to
admit it sounds a little silly (actually a lot silly) in an observing
report to say, "I started observing at 9am but the best objects were not
visible until 11 am when the sky was really dark."

Anyone with any kind of sense would know what UT really means.

Well, not really. You need the C as in UTC to really define it.


What?? University of Tulsa California???

At the risk of using long words which will challenge your intellect:

UTC is "Coordinated Universal Time", or "Universal Time,
Coordinated". It is UTC instead of UCT because the abbreviation is
based on the initials in French, not English.



MikeThomas wrote:
Anyone with any kind of sense would know what UT really means.

Well, not really. You need the C as in UTC to really define it.



What?? University of Tulsa California???

Phil Wheeler wrote in news:vvgTc.3706$aB1.2170
@twister.socal.rr.com:

At the risk of using long words which will challenge your intellect:

UTC is "Coordinated Universal Time", or "Universal Time,
Coordinated". It is UTC instead of UCT because the abbreviation is
based on the initials in French, not English.

Ummm... don't you mean "instead of CUT?" g

On Sat, 14 Aug 2004 04:26:03 GMT, Phil Wheeler wrote:

UTC is "Coordinated Universal Time", or "Universal Time,
Coordinated". It is UTC instead of UCT because the abbreviation is
based on the initials in French, not English.

Actually, it isn't. In French it would be TUC. In English, it would be CUT. The
abbreviation was chosen (politically) as a compromise, and is not a true
abbreviation in any language.

_________________________________________________

Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com

Phil Wheeler wrote:
At the risk of using long words which will challenge your intellect:

UTC is "Coordinated Universal Time", or "Universal Time,
Coordinated". It is UTC instead of UCT because the abbreviation is
based on the initials in French, not English.

No it isn't. In French the noun precedes, so it would be TUC. "TUC" is
English English for "Trades Union Congress", which would be very
confusing.

UT is the "basic" idea; UT0, UT1 and UTC are modifications thereof. See:
http://astunit.com/tutorials/time.htm

Best,
Stephen

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Paul Lawler wrote:
That's fine if you live within a couple of hours of UT, but you have to
admit it sounds a little silly (actually a lot silly) in an observing
report to say, "I started observing at 9am but the best objects were
not visible until 11 am when the sky was really dark."

Straw man: no-one is suggesting that people should do that. What is
being suggested is that people state "I began observing at 09:00 UT..."
etc.

What everyone seems to be losing sight of is that astronomy (like this
newsgroup) is an *international* activity; it therefore makes sense to
use an international time format. UT is the agreed standard time "zone"
for astronomers, so it makes sense to conform to that when reporting
obs, etc. We have already had it demonstrated how e.g. CST can mean
something entirely different to an American and an Australian.

If someone suggested that we used Julian Day numbers or GMAT, I could
understand the reluctance to comply. Similarly, if someone objected to
local time being used on a "national" newsgroup, such as
de.sci.astronomie, fr.sci.astronomie, it.scienza.astronomia or
uk.sci.astronomy, the reluctance to comply might be understandable, but
to fight against using an internationally agreed standard on an
international newsgroup smacks (to me) of obstructionism. YMMV.

Best,
Stephen

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"Chris L Peterson" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 14 Aug 2004 04:26:03 GMT, Phil Wheeler
wrote:

UTC is "Coordinated Universal Time", or "Universal Time,
Coordinated". It is UTC instead of UCT because the abbreviation is
based on the initials in French, not English.

Actually, it isn't. In French it would be TUC. In English, it would be
CUT. The
abbreviation was chosen (politically) as a compromise, and is not a true
abbreviation in any language.


Yeah and if you add an N it becomes...****!

Stephen Tonkin wrote in
:

Paul Lawler wrote:
That's fine if you live within a couple of hours of UT, but you have
to admit it sounds a little silly (actually a lot silly) in an
observing report to say, "I started observing at 9am but the best
objects were not visible until 11 am when the sky was really dark."

Straw man: no-one is suggesting that people should do that. What is
being suggested is that people state "I began observing at
09:00 UT..." etc.

That's what I said, actually. 09:00 UT is 9am UT

What everyone seems to be losing sight of is that astronomy (like this
newsgroup) is an *international* activity; it therefore makes sense to
use an international time format. UT is the agreed standard time
"zone" for astronomers, so it makes sense to conform to that when
reporting obs, etc. We have already had it demonstrated how e.g. CST
can mean something entirely different to an American and an
Australian.

Unless you are discussing an event for which the precise "moment" is
important (e.g., an eclipse, or occultation), it seems far more natural
to speak in terms of one's local time zone (whereever that might bet). I
don't want to read someone's obeserving report from Australia, and look
up the UT offset to figure out whether they were observing in the early
evening or early morning.

If someone suggested that we used Julian Day numbers or GMAT, I could
understand the reluctance to comply. Similarly, if someone objected to
local time being used on a "national" newsgroup, such as
de.sci.astronomie, fr.sci.astronomie, it.scienza.astronomia or
uk.sci.astronomy, the reluctance to comply might be understandable,
but to fight against using an internationally agreed standard on an
international newsgroup smacks (to me) of obstructionism. YMMV.

I understand what you are saying, but my original point was that in
order for you to know that 09:00UT is 23:00 (my local time), I still
have to tell you where I am, and if I tell you where I am, then you can
do the UT math just as well as I can, while still reading my observing
report in the time context in which I experienced it.

Paul Lawler wrote:
[...]
observing report to say, "I started observing at 9am but the best
objects were not visible until 11 am when the sky was really dark."

Straw man: no-one is suggesting that people should do that. What is
being suggested is that people state "I began observing at
09:00 UT..." etc.

That's what I said, actually.

Actually, strictly speaking it isn't.

09:00 UT is 9am UT

If am/pm is used, it is not a UT time. UT is not given in am/pm -- it is
given in 24-hr clock time (and the fact that UT is used should be given
somewhere in the report). Similarly, dates in astronomy should follow
the appropriate ISO (8401? 8041? 9999?) format, i.e. yyyy-mm-dd.

[...]
I understand what you are saying, but my original point was that in
order for you to know that 09:00UT is 23:00 (my local time), I still
have to tell you where I am,

Of course. Every observing report should have the observer's location.
This is why some of us have it in our sigs.

and if I tell you where I am, then you can
do the UT math just as well as I can,

If the observer does the arithmetic, it has to be done exactly once. If
every reader has to do it, it has to be done n times, where n1. To my
mind it shows courtesy to one's readers to do the arithmetic for them.
YMMV.

while still reading my observing
report in the time context in which I experienced it.

If the local "time context" is relevant to the report, there is nothing
to prevent that being included. Similarly, every report should have
details of sky conditions.

Best,
Stephen

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