And the answer is a clock," said Warren Walls of the U.S. Naval Observatory. ... "We have over 100 different atomic clocks that we use to generate our realization of UTC.

Astronomical time fell behind atomic time by 2.5 milliseconds every day. That meant the atomic clock would say it's midnight and to Earth it was midnight a fraction of a second later, Agnew said.

Looking for an atomic clock on Earth? The Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C. is full of them. Bettmann/Bettmann/Getty Images. What is an atomic clock? Invented back in 1948, ...

"Think of the atomic clocks at the U.S. Naval Observatory (in Washington). They're the heartbeat of the nation, synchronizing everything. You're going to want a heartbeat on the moon," Coggins said.

The atomic clock is a standardized unit of measurement that has been used since the 1950s to tell time and measure the Earth’s ... retired director of time at the US Naval Observatory. ...

Because astronomers have divided the globe into 24 time zones, using one clock time worldwide is impractical. That's why the times of astronomical events are often given in Universal Time (UT).

The planet’s rotation was completed 1.59 milliseconds short of a 24-hour day on June 29, breaking the record for the world’s shortest day in modern history.

NASA’s Kevin Coggins, head of space communications and navigation, explained it with a metaphor: “Think of the atomic clocks at the US Naval Observatory. They’re the heartbeat of the nation ...

From sundials to atomic clocks, ... The Royal Observatory, Greenwich, in London, was at the forefront of this technological rush. It was here that Greenwich Mean Time was developed ...

RIO DE JANEIRO, February 04, 2025--Adtran today announced that the Brazilian National Observatory (Observatório Nacional) has integrated its OSA 3300 Super High-Performance optical cesium atomic ...

This timekeeping device is based on a ytterbium lattice that combines two atomic clocks, ... Times labeled UT in astronomical almanacs such as those produced by the U.S. Naval Observatory are UT1.

Interestingly enough, even though the U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington D.C. is the other partner in the timekeeping business and the primary location of its clocks is in the nation’s capital ...