Progress Report on Project Merit

Abstract

The origin, objectives and programme of Project MERIT, which is a special programme of international collaboration to Monitor Earth-Rotation and Intercompare the Techniques of observation and analysis, were described briefly at IAU Colloquium No. 56 (Wilkins, 1981). Further details of the project and reviews of the techniques to be used were published in a special report (Wilkins, 1980). The MERIT Short Campaign of observations was held during the period 1980 August 1 to 1980 October 31 and the preliminary results obtained will be published by the Bureau International de l’Heure in its Annual Report for 1980. The main objective of the campaign was to provide a realistic test of the operational arrangements that will be required during the MERIT Main Campaign in 1983/4. The first MERIT Workshop was held at Grasse on 1980 May 19–21 to review the operational aspects of the short campaign and to continue the planning for the main campaign. Some of the results obtained during the short campaign were presented on the following day at IAU Colloquium No. 63, and are reported in this volume. The proceedings of the Workshop will be published by the Working Group in a report that will also contain the principal results of the short campaign and information about the availability of the observational data.