*************************************************

Hong Kong people lead a busy city life and accurate timing is essential in their race to meet work schedules. The Hong Kong Observatory (HKO) uses Caesium beam atomic clock to maintain the Hong Kong Standard Time with an accuracy of up to fractions of a microsecond a day.

With the advance of information technology and widespread use of computers, HKO has provided a network time service since 1999 to facilitate computer users to synchronize their computer clocks through Internet. This time synchronization service has become very popular since its introduction. Up to the end of June 2002, over 250 million hits have been recorded. In the past year, the daily hit rate exceeded 400,000.

This network time service is simple to use. Computer users can synchronize their computer clocks to the Hong Kong Standard Time by downloading suitable software from the Internet and designating HKO's Internet time server "stdtime.gov.hk" as the network time server in the software. Details can be found in HKO's website: http://www.weather.gov.hk/nts/ntime.htm

In response to the public's interest in the Lunar Calendar, HKO has launched a new service and compiled a set of conversion tables for Gregorian and Lunar calendars between 1901 and 2010. These tables are available on HKO's webpage below: http://www.weather.gov.hk/gts/time/conversion.htm

HKO will add new conversion tables from time to time.

The conversion tables contain information on the Gregorian and Lunar calendar dates, the Sexagenary Cycle, 12-Year Cycle, 24 solar terms and the dates that the Hong Kong Summer Time was enforced.

By referring to the conversion table webpage, the public can now readily obtain answers to questions such as: "What was the Lunar calendar date and the 12-year Cycle for my birthday?", "Will there be a leap month in the Lunar Calendar next year?", "Which day of the week will the Lunar New Year Day in 2004 fall on?", etc.

End/Tuesday, July 23, 2002

NNNN