On UTC

Author: Alex P.

A common metric for time on the internet. It’s a standard at the International Space Station. Weather forecasters use it to avoid confusion about time zones, and radio operators often rely on it to schedule contacts. Let me introduce you to Universal Time Coordinated, better known by SSPers as “UTC”. It’s the primary standard by which the world regulates clocks and time. And to be frank, it’s quite useful at a program whose participants are scattered across a multitude of different time zones. But it was also the reason my team almost didn’t submit an observing proposal on time. 

After a long day of astronomy lectures, de-bugging Python code, and trying to understand multi-variable calculus, the last thing I wanted to do was more math and astronomy. However, as I’m getting ready for bed, I get a message from one of my group mates saying we have an observing request…due tonight? 

One of the many responsibilities of a research group at SSP is to regularly submit observing requests, documents detailing information about their group’s assigned asteroid on the night it’s scheduled to be observed so that those at the designated observatory can properly collect data/images since we can’t do it ourselves this year. 

Somehow none of us seemed to realize that Jun 29, 7:00 UTC was indeed the night of Jun 28! After a few minutes of panicking, my team and I frantically hop on a call to complete the request. Thanks to a good catch by one of my group members and our impromptu middle-of-the-night astronomical calculations, we were able to turn our request in on time. Phew.

Hi, I’m Alex. I’m originally from Ecuador, but currently live in Southern California. I enjoy coding, playing tennis, and reading about international relations. I’m really excited to get to know everyone throughout the next four weeks!

1 comment

  1. Lars Klassen

    Nice article, Alex, very informative! L

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