Hi all, Awhile back I posted about some mysterious 0.7 ns jumps in three different masers (of the same brand) at three different locations around Australia.
Well we think we've found the problem. All three locations also have in-room air conditioners of the same brand. These are used for cooling only. When these units turn on, we think they induce a magnetic field from the inrush current that briefly disrupts the maser. We don't think it's electrical because moving to another phase did not change things. These air conditioners are all quite close to the masers. Typically a metre or 2 away. Much was done to discover this, but the clincher was that when the weather cooled enough at the southern most location (Hobart), we turned off the air con (only heating was needed) and the problem vanished. So there's a lesson here for all maser owners. The jump of 0.7 nsec is not much, but it's huge for VLBI and for time-nuts. Jim Palfreyman _______________________________________________ time-nuts mailing list -- [email protected] To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
