Attend Moonrise Picnic Tue Oct 27, 5:30-7 PM

**Ahoy there,** The next moonrise picnic will be Tuesday, October 27 from 5:30 - 7 PM. Moonrise will be around 6:10 PM. (Sunset around 5:25 PM) Since this is the day after the official full moon, we’ll get a even better view of craters because the edges will be highlighted by shadows. Richly colored autumn leaves are starting to fall; deer are fattened up for winter. Fields have been harvested leaving them bare for fox and hare to glean the ground for leftover grain. It is time to hunt. At least according to American Indians who called October's Full Moon the Hunter's Moon. **WHEN**: Tues, 27 October 5:30 - 7 PM **WHERE**: Pont des Arts. We'll gather around the 2nd bench from the Left Bank side of the bridge. Nearest metros: Pont Neuf and Louvre-Rivoli. **WHAT**: Everyone brings food and drink to share. Hot drinks will make you especially popular: Hot cider, hot chocolate, spiced wine, tea, coffee, etc. **WHY**: Share one of the most memorable sights in Paris with some of the nicest people around. **WHO**: You and your friends. **HOW** to find us: Look for a group of “lunatics” speaking English and French gathered around the 2nd bench from the Left Bank side of the bridge. Look for a small telescope if the weather is good. **BIRTHDAYS**: Are you a Scorpio? If so, let me know so we can celebrate your birthday this month and blow out the world’s largest birthday candle. **THEME:** Time to change (your clocks) **PUZZLER**: Will you set your clocks back by 1 second? **PUZZLER ANSWER**: More than a second Bob. We fall back a full hour on Oct 25 when France goes off DST. Yeah I know that. But did you know that every couple of years or so we have to insert a leap second go keep the two time-keeping systems synchronized? The two are not Europe and North America; they are Celestial (or Sidereal) time and Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). Celestial Time is the “real time” based on Earth’s rotation and the position of the sun and stars in the sky. The problem is that Earth doesn’t maintain a regular pace of rotation. It often slows down a tiny bit due the gravitational attraction of the moon, shifts deep inside Earth’s core, and movement of water and ice increasingly affected by melting of the polar ice caps causing climate change. UTC is much more regular because it’s based on atomic clocks which are very precise and consistent. It has been important insert a leap second from time to time (ha ha) to keep the two systems synchronized, because traditional navigation systems used Celestial Time for centuries. However since the advent of GPS traditional navigational reckoning by looking to the stars has become obsolete. The leap second has already been causing headaches for our highly synchronized networks (like data centers, financial trade, etc), Earth’s rotation is not consistent or predictable and it’s expected to actually speed up at some points in the coming years. Network systems have largely managed to cope with adding a leap second, but apparently most digital technologies are not prepared to deal with a negative leap second. Subtraction is harder than addition. Ask any grade schooler. So last week the International Bureaus of Weights and Measures (BIPM) meeting in France abolished the leap second. Celestial Time and UTC will no longer be synchronized. Until they drift at least one hour apart. That won’t happen for another 1000 to 3000 years giving us plenty of time to figure something else out. Anyway by then atomic clocks will have been long replaced by even more accurate time keeping. [https://www.cnn.com/2026/10/13/science/leap-second-elimination-time-standard](https://www.cnn.com/2026/10/13/science/leap-second-elimination-time-standard) [https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2024-03-28/global-warming-may-be-affecting-planetary-timekeeping/103638476](https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2024-03-28/global-warming-may-be-affecting-planetary-timekeeping/103638476) [https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/16/science/leap-second-abolished-vote.html?eafs_enabled=false](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/16/science/leap-second-abolished-vote.html?eafs_enabled=false) **ciao for niao,** **Captain Bob**