Re: Midas and Y2K

[Preben Grosbol <pgrosbol@eso.org>]

Dear colleagues,

We did go through MIDAS to check for Y2K-compliance.  All issues
we identified have been corrected in the 98NOV version which
has been available since the summer 1999.  The implementation
of the new FITS date format (in ISO format e.g. 1999-12-21) was
already available in 97NOV and was activated as of 1999-01-01.
The old FITS format is still valid for dates from 1900-01-01 to
1999-12-31.  Actually, MIDAS will still use the old FITS date
format for dates in this interval.

For VLT data, the ISO format was used since start of operations.
Thus, we do not expect problems.  In general, the start of
observations is defined by MJD-OBS which do not suffer from the
Y2K problem.

We believe that all should be prepared but we could have overlooked
something so please report any problem you find.

Best regards,
Preben Grosbol