So, what time is it on the moon?

🌓🕰️?

You need to define a moon time if you want to know. The time on the moon is as yet the smae as the one on Earth.
Since the moon is coulped on the Earth's orbit, a day is about 28 Eartn days,. It makes no snese to have 24 "Moon-hours" in a moon day, since each of these hours would be more than one earth day.
In fact since "time" and "time-keepimg" is a human requirement I think it best to just synchronize everything to Earth time as long as we don't leave the solar system (so our lifetime +X)

@Ponderable
It will be interesting whatever they come up with. Not sure why it matters much.
My job on Apollo was Tracking and timing, timing part, 2 atomic clocks and backup quartz clock to sync data transfer from scope to scope when Earth loses line of sight from one radio telescope to one that IS in line of sight, they had 100 microseconds to coordinate shifting data from Apollo to another scope thousands of miles away from the one losing it. I imagine now with the vastly increased data rates, the time to switch without losing data today would be more like a microsecond time slot to get from scope A to scope B. And that problem existed for the moon astronauts on the moon as well as to and fro from Earth to moon. I guess it would make such switches easier if there was a standard moon time clock, but when I was on Apollo, we synced the atomic clocks to WWV, rough in, then the clocks took over much more exact time clicks, some one second in 3000 years accurate, which IMO was pretty damn accurate for '69, now they are pushing clocks accurate to like less than a second for the entire age of the universe, so accurate now, you can measure relativistic time flow differences from a clock at exact sea level and one a meter higher! Big Al was right for sure🙂

@pianoman1 said
🌓🕰️?

Depends on whose rocket lands there.

@moonbus
It doesn't matter who lands probes there, a standard time zone deal will help all scientists doing research on the moon. Like I said when I was on Apollo, radio telescopes used to pick up data from rockets on the way to the moon or coming back or on the surface, ALL will be able to send data to a single scope for only a limited time till the scope goes over the horizon and invisible to the rockets and probes which is why they ALL have to switch to another dish to keep data flowing.

Zulu time, obviously, for continuity.
(Greenwich Mean Time)

@Cliff-Mashburn
Sure, moon time as it relates to Earth time but one day is one month on the moon since it is tidally locked only one side showing to us Earthies.
So the problem still remains for tracking data from the moon, Earth has this pesky habit of rotation 360 degrees every 24 or so hours. I would have preferred if Earth were actually flat, there would be no time divisions, we would ALL be on the same time zone🙂 but radio telescopes lose sight of the moon every day so there has to be a way to switch to another scope to continue sending or receiving data from whatever is out there, moon, mars whatever, any fixed position in space communicating with Earth runs into the same issue.
From that regard when we get folks rambling around on Mars they will have the same issue, Mars rotates at its rate so there would need to be a time standard there as well.

@sonhouse said
@Cliff-Mashburn
Sure, moon time as it relates to Earth time but one day is one month on the moon since it is tidally locked only one side showing to us Earthies.
So the problem still remains for tracking data from the moon, Earth has this pesky habit of rotation 360 degrees every 24 or so hours. I would have preferred if Earth were actually flat, there would be no time div ...[text shortened]... ve the same issue, Mars rotates at its rate so there would need to be a time standard there as well.

So I found the skinny on why they want a moon standard time.
It has to do with relativity. A tiny difference in time flow on the moon puts identical time clocks, one on Earth and the other on the Moon, will be different time readings off by about 50 microseconds per year because the space/time flow depends on mass and Earth has higher mass so less mass, faster time flow, of course not by much but like I was saying about my Timing and Tracking job on Apollo, switching between one radio telescope and another thousands of miles away to keep data flowing, even back then it had to be within one hundred nanoseconds switch time between dishes and 50 microseconds is 50,000 nanoseconds so divide by number of days in a year, you get 138 nanoseconds per day the time hack would be off so there has to be coordination between those two sets of time flow, which can be done if you know exactly how many microseconds or nanoseconds of difference there is between Earth clocks and Moon clocks.
So back in 1970, they wanted switch time to be less than 100 nanoseconds and you can see in one day the time hack would be off by 138 nanoseconds so they could not have switched accurately and would have lost some data. Now of course with data rates from space in megabytes per second or more, that 100 nanosecond window would be more like 10 or 1 nanosecond off so it is imperative to keep clocks coordinated despite slightly different time flows Vis a Vis Earth V moon, or Earth V Mars or any other body, but there the difference is more complicated by the fact Earth and Mars are at different distances from the sun so you have to account for time flow change due to difference between Earth mass and Mars mass but the difference to the sun for Mars V Earth.

Another question:
I land my probe on the moon, haul out my grand piano and set my metronome to 120 (120 beats per minute). Will my Mozart’s “alla turca” be the same speed as Mr moonpianst’s, who has also set his metronome at 120?

@pianoman1 said
Another question:
I land my probe on the moon, haul out my grand piano and set my metronome to 120 (120 beats per minute). Will my Mozart’s “alla turca” be the same speed as Mr moonpianst’s, who has also set his metronome at 120?

Depends on how your metronome works, but for the most designs: yes.

It will sound differently of course due to the thinner atmosphere....(you won't hear a thing)

@Pianoman1
Yeah, living on the moon sucks, no atmosphere🙂
But suppose you are in a living space, 15 PSI air like Earth, the time shift would be so low you would hear no difference in frequency or timing, like I said, the difference Earth V Moon time would make an atomic clock be off by 50 microseconds V Earth per day, so 86400 seconds in a day, in one second it would be off by PICO seconds.
I have a home studio for recording audio, Studio 1 DAW and a Tascam 16-08 I/0 recording 96K and 24 bit, really great sounds better than CD level. My comp produces some 10 milliseconds latency, and I can't hear even that in timing errors so you can imagine nano seconds or pico seconds of added latency to an audio track.
BTW, do you have any tunes on Sound Cloud? I have a couple of keyboard tunes, one I wrote, Kali's Waltz and another Irish trad tune Star of the county down. But total I am over 360 tracks there now. I record mostly with dulcimer, mandolin, guitar and autoharp. Just folk music, but I did have a great music teacher at my college, Palomar College in San Marcos, Howard Brubeck. You may have heard of that name🙂

@sonhouse https://soundcloud.com/user-968404146

@pianoman1 said
🌓🕰️?

Without a fixed point, what would you have for a point of reference to base time on?

@KellyJay
It is true time flow varies by altitude which results in variations in the strength of gravity and near mass and such but the references are from extremely accurate atomic clocks which was part of my job during Apollo days. So a clock on the surface of Earth V a clock on the surface of the moon results in a time difference of about 50 microseconds per day the two clocks would be out and that is the gist of the moon time problem NASA wants solved.

@sonhouse said
@KellyJay
It is true time flow varies by altitude which results in variations in the strength of gravity and near mass and such but the references are from extremely accurate atomic clocks which was part of my job during Apollo days. So a clock on the surface of Earth V a clock on the surface of the moon results in a time difference of about 50 microseconds per day the two clocks would be out and that is the gist of the moon time problem NASA wants solved.

So if we know that by that degree of certainty, why not have the rate on the moon clock move at a different speed to maintain a constant earth time?