Have you ever had the problem where the time indicated on one of your clocks (including your computer’s clock) is different to another one? Well, I have and it can certainly cause headaches when trying to analyse the large amounts of data that we generate from our images.
I now have one of those “radio-controlled” clocks that gives me the precise time via an atomic clock in the UK. The clock broadcast signal is controlled and monitored by the National Physics Laboratory in Teddington and the transmitter was moved to Anthorn in 2003 – although everyone still refers to the atomic clock as “The Rugby Transmitter”.
So now the observatory computer is always giving me the correct time for the FITS data files and other astronomical programs that I might be running as I always “synch” it to my local atomic clock before each imaging session.
