Coordinated Universal Time (UTC or UT) is the system that astronomers use for referencing the timing of specific events. UT corresponds to the mean solar time at 0° longitude (aka, Greenwich Mean Time).

Because the RECON network spans at least two time zones, we will reference all times associated with occultation events using UT.  The table below is helpful for converting from UT to local network times:

Mountain Standard Time (MST) = 7 hour behind UT
Pacific Standard Time (PST) = 8 hours behind UT
Pacific Daylight Time (PDT) = 7 hours behind UT

Arizona RECON teams stay on MST throughout the year and will therefore always be 7 hours behind UT.  Teams in California, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington alternate between PST in the winter months and PDT in the summer months.  When on PST from fall through spring, these teams will be 8 hours behind UT. When on daylight savings time (PDT) from spring through fall, these teams will be 7 hours behind UT (the same as MST).

Note that for events occurring before midnight local time, the UT date is a day ahead of the local event time.

Sample Cases:

Here are two sample cases.  If given an event time of 2015 June 11 06:50:06 UT, you would subtract 7 hours to convert to either MST or PDT.  So this time would correspond to 2015 June 10 23:50:06 UT (or 11:30 PM on June 10). If given an event time of 2016 January 1 07:30:22, this time would correspond to 2016 January 1 00:30:22 MST and 2015 December 31 23:30:22 PST.