Time stamp error in FITS-header

Sequence Generator
1

Hi SGPro.

Your software appears to get time stamping wrong.
It prints my local time as DATE-OBS. I live in Denmark and our local time zone is LZT=UT+1.
Time stamp in DATE-LOC is my LZT+1 h !
I do minor planet photometry using MPO Canopus and uses Dimension 4 for PC clock syncronization. Both Works fine and has done so for years.
In my User Profile Manager I have written 10 degrees EAST and this is correctly written into the FITS-Header.
Sharing a time series with another astronomer it was brought to my attention that other observers had expirienced this error with SGPro.

Is there other settings in SGPro that will affect time stamping please let me know. If not I would like to request a bug fix.

With regards, Kim Lang

2

Hi all.
Would really appreciate some help here. Have’nt found the cause for time zone error in my FITS headers.

3

DATE-OBS is UTC time so should be your Timezone + 1
DATE-LOC is your local time so should be as displayed by windows.

We get both of these things from the windows time provider, so maybe something is incorrect with your timezone settings on your machine?

Thanks,
Jared

4

Hello,
I see the FITS header time stamp problem when using my QHY9 CCD camera. My local time is in the
DATE-OBS field and UT time is in the DATE-LOC field as shown below (copied directly from the header):

OBJECT = ‘Comet 64P’ / Object name
DATE-LOC= ‘2018-11-17T13:37:49’ / Local observation date
DATE-OBS= ‘2018-11-17T19:37:49’ / UTC observation date
IMAGETYP= 'LIGHT ’ / Type of frame

The image was not taken at 1:37 in the afternoon!
I have not noticed the transposed times when using other brand cameras. Also, the QHY9’s FITS headers
are correct when using other imaging software. All imaging is done on the same computer system using the same OS (Win 10) and same drivers. I also use D4 for time sync.

So, in my case, the time errors seem to be isolated to the QHY camera. I don’t see any “fix” that I can do short of manually editing all my FITS headers.

Anyone have ideas?

Thanks

5

Some cameras will report the actual image start time. In the case that they do we use that value. Look through one of your logs for:

ASCOM Camera - Camera reports last image start time as:

Conversely if your camera doesn’t report the time you’ll see the following in the log:
ASCOM Camera: Could not get last exposure start time.

I’m guessing the camera is reporting the time incorrectly.

Thanks,
Jared