[LEAPSECS] Bulletin C number 43

[Rob Seaman]

mike cook wrote:


> Le 05/01/2012 15:39, Zefram a écrit :

>> Markus Kuhn wrote:

>>> A positive leap second will be introduced at the end of June 2012.

>> Slight surprise there.  It's the obviously-correct scheduling to minimise

>> |UT1-UTC|, but IERS has been favouring December in recent years,

>> and there was plenty of slack to postpone this leap until December.

>> (Actually |UT1-UTC| could be kept smaller still by scheduling the leap

>> for March, but that would require a procedural change.)

>> 

>> -zefram

> Looking at the predicted values, 2012s are at the lower bounds for previous leaps. Maybe they were making sure there was no chance of breaking -0,9s.


In previous decades they tended to schedule leap seconds early:

	http://iraf.noao.edu/~seaman/leap/#scheduling

I had been expecting one this December just past, not next.  It's interesting that the previous period of accelerating LOD in the mid-1980's was also reflected in a shift to later scheduling.  Probably says more about people than time.

Rob Seaman
National Optical Astronomy Observatory
Tucson, AZ