Hi,

For those of us without an atomic clock, or a GPS that will sync time with a PC here are a couple of windows applications that may be of use for timing the transit.

sourceforge.net/projects/nettime/

Net time is an open source implementation of the network time protocol for windows machines. NTP does suffer from a litle drift and computers may be inaccurate to about 1 second in worst cases, but it still the best way (IMO) to keep a system in sync if you dont have radio or GPS clocks.

The `sync time from internet` tool, in the default windows settings, on XP difers slightly from standard SNTP and should not be relied on.

www.vt-2004.org/observations/guidelines/stopper12_eng.zip

This is a stopwatch utility. The idea is that as you are looking at the transit, you hit the enter key when the contact occurs and the software will record the time, accurate to 1/1000th of a second (though its unlikley your system clock will be accurate to more than tens of miliseconds).

More observing tips from www.vt-2004.org/observations/guidelines/

Cheers,
~Al

If you do not wish to use software to get the atomic time then try this...

www.time.gov/timezone.cgi?UTC/s/0/java

Unlike the other links in the previous post, this is not software you need to download, it's a website that connects directly to the atomic clock by the United States Naval Observatory and even gives the expected accuracy and lag due to internet bandwidth.

More observing information can be found on the EAAS Sky@Night webpage.

www.eaas.co.uk

Clear Skies


MarkDJ