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Re: Simple Calculation of Sunset Time required

Subject: Re: Simple Calculation of Sunset Time required
From: Chris L Peterson
Date: Wed, 20 Feb 2008 08:21:41 -0700
Newsgroups: sci.astro, sci.astro.amateur, comp.home.automation

On Wed, 20 Feb 2008 07:03:14 -0600, George <gh424NO824SPAM@xxxxxxx>
wrote:

>As an aside, I wonder whether virtually all formulas like
>this will become invalid if the current proposal to replace
>leap seconds with leap hours is approved.  I was a bit
>surprised to learn that the proposal is actually coming up
>for a vote in April.  If I understand the proposal
>correctly, which I may not, it just seems screwy.
>Apparently, UTC would be allowed to get out of whack with
>"astronomical" time by an hour before it is corrected.
>Seems like that would screw up a lot of things.

In a few cases it would require minor changes to the inputs of formulas.
It wouldn't have any practical impact on applications like what is being
discussed in this thread, since it takes hundreds of years for such big
errors to accumulate.

IMO leap anythings are silly. UT should just be the standard, and it
should drift completely free of astronomical time, with no correction
applied (but a correction factor known, of course).

_________________________________________________

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

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