Time and Frequency Activities at the U.S. Naval Observatory

Demetrios Matsakis

Abstract: The U. S. Naval Observatory (USNO) has provided timing for the Navy and the Department of Defense since 1830 and, in cooperation with other institutions, has also provided timing for the United States and the international community. Its Master Clock is the source of UTC (USNO), which has stayed within 5 ns of UTC in the past year, with an RMS deviation of 3 ns. The data used to generate UTC (USNO) are based upon 73 HP5071 cesium and 18 hydrogen maser frequency standards in three buildings at two sites. The USNO disseminates time via voice, telephone modem, LORAN, Network Time Protocol, GPS, and Two-Way Satellite Time Transfer. The USNO would not be able to meet all the requirements of its users had it kept to the same technology it had 10 years ago; this paper will describe some of the changes being made to meet the anticipated needs of our users. While we aim to increase our accuracy and precision, we deem it equally important to bring about robustness, and we recommend this for our users as well. Further details and explanations of our services can be found online at http://tycho.usno.navy.mil, or by contacting the author directly.
Published in: Proceedings of the 35th Annual Precise Time and Time Interval Systems and Applications Meeting
December 2 - 4, 2003
Hilton Resort on Mission Bay
San Diego, California
Pages: 23 - 38
Cite this article: Matsakis, Demetrios, "Time and Frequency Activities at the U.S. Naval Observatory," Proceedings of the 35th Annual Precise Time and Time Interval Systems and Applications Meeting, San Diego, California, December 2003, pp. 23-38.
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