[IPTA Clock] IPTA clock project

[George.Hobbs at csiro.au]

Dear all,

  It was great to see you all in Kiama last week.  As you know, I submitted an IPTA project on developing an IPTA timescale. This has been accepted by the IPTASC and so we should start to think about the project.  Mike Keith has created a mailing list for people who want to be involved in the work.  If you are interested (or know of other people who may be interested -- David/Joris, I've forgotten Nicolas's email address, so please let him know about this) then please sign up at http://lists.pulsarastronomy.net/mailman/listinfo/ipta_clock_lists.pulsarastronomy.net.    You will be able to see an archive of the emails at http://lists.pulsarastronomy.net/pipermail/ipta_clock_lists.pulsarastronomy.net/.

I hope that all email exchanges will use that mailing list -- this will ensure that everybody has all the information on the current status of the project.  

I've copied at least one representative of each PTA who is on the IPTA steering committee on this email in case they want to let the rest of their PTA know about this new mailing list.  Personally, I don't mind if everyone signs up, but because of this we should note that simply being part of the mailing list does not imply being in the lead group of authors on any resulting paper.

I have some plans for how we can move on with the project - basically we need to 1) get the data sets together, 2) test various algorithms against each other using simulated data and 3) understand the implications of our results for the atomic-timescale community and for the pulsar community -- but we should discuss the plan using the new mailing list.   Probably the biggest challenge and the most work will be in getting the data sets!

I'm looking forward to us developing an IPTA timescale -- TT(IPTA12)!

Cheers,
 George