Minor problems encountered at night that have little impact on observing should be reported in the fault book and will be worked on the next day. Once the fault is rectified the technician will add a note to the fault report indicating the action taken. Under these circumstances, the SAAO technician responsible, in most instances the electronics technician, may give first priority to rectifying the fault, in which case it is conceivable that astronomical observing time may be lost if a fault is encountered at the same time with a telescope or instrument, but every effort will be made to avoid this. Otherwise, SAAO telescope faults have priority over minor faults in foreign installations. The resulting drift is no more than 1-2 microseconds under normal conditions.
Sidereal time is calculated from the mean time.
Multiplexed time information is distributed to each dome via a fibre optic cable. The RS422 signals are used by the instrument computer, encoder system and time display. If you believe the time displayed is not correct, please notify the electronics technician. The weather patterns at Sutherland are not highly seasonal, and the clear weather appears to be fairly uniformly distributed throughout the year. There are a small number of insulated observing suits available for loan by visitors, but visitors who bring their own cold weather protection can be more certain that it will fit.