[time-nuts] Merry 55555

[Tom Van Baak]

In case you didn't notice -- this year Christmas falls on the
beautiful looking MJD 55555.

Some of the newcomers to the group may not be familiar
with MJD (Modified Julian Date). It's used extensively in the
timing community (see http://tycho.usno.navy.mil/mjd.html).

For those of you with vintage Trak 6460 time scale generators
(see http://www.leapsecond.com/pages/trak6460) a special
treat will occur at 13:20:00 UTC* on Christmas day. The time
at the tone will be 55555.55555. Once in a lifetime.

That's 620AM local time at NIST and 820AM for USNO (send
us a video/photo from the time scale room if you can).

/tvb

* Picky astronomers in the group may want to adjust their
MJD photo by 135 milliseconds to account for today's DUT1.
(see http://maia.usno.navy.mil/ser7/ser7.dat)