NAME

Time::TCB - Barycentric Coordinate Time

DESCRIPTION

Barycentric Coordinate Time (TCB) is a coordinate time scale representing
time in the Sol system.  Specifically, it is the proper time experienced
by a distant clock comoving with the barycentre of the Sol system.

This module represents instants on the TCB time scale as a scalar number
of SI seconds since an epoch.  This is an appropriate form for all manner
of calculations.  TCB is defined with a well-known point at TAI instant
1977-01-01T00:00:00.0 at the Terran geocentre.  This point is assigned the
scalar value -460_080_000, putting the epoch at approximately the date
at which the resolution defining TCB was adopted by the International
Astronomical Union.  This epoch is deliberately very different from
those used for Geocentric Coordinate Time (TCG) in Time::TCG and for
Terrestrial Time (TT) in Time::TT, to avoid confusion between them.

There is also a conventional way to represent TCB instants using day-based
notations associated with planetary rotation `time' scales.  The `day'
of TCB is a nominal period of exactly 86400 SI seconds, which is slightly
shorter than an actual Terran day.  The well-known point at TAI instant
1977-01-01T00:00:00.0 is assigned the label 1977-01-01T00:00:32.184
(MJD 43144.0003725).  Because TCB is not connected to Terran rotation,
and so has no inherent concept of a day, it is somewhat misleading to
use such day-based notations.  Conversion between this notation and
the linear count of seconds is supported by this module.  The day-based
notations for TT, TCG, and TCB instants yield very similar values for
corresponding instants, so care must be taken to avoid confusion.

INSTALLATION

	perl Makefile.PL
	make
	make test
	make install

AUTHOR

Andrew Main (Zefram) <zefram@fysh.org>

COPYRIGHT

Copyright (C) 2006 Andrew Main (Zefram) <zefram@fysh.org>

This module is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
under the same terms as Perl itself.
