Leap second to be added to official time at the end of the year
7.26.2005

On December 31, 2005, a leap second will be added to the international standard of time known as Coordinated Universal Time or UTC. UTC is kept by ultra precise atomic clocks. Similar to a leap year, when a day is added to keep the calendar in sync with the seasons, UTC is kept in sync to the solar day by an adjustment of a leap second whenever the two are out of sync by one second.

The last minute of the year will have 61 seconds. The sequence of UTC second markers will be:
2005 December 31, 23h 59m 59s
2005 December 31, 23h 59m 60s
2006 January 1, 0h 0m 0s

Spectracom time servers and master clocks automatically adjust for leap seconds to keep mission-critical networking and communications applications accurate.

For more information on leap seconds, visit:
NIST time and frequency division
The Earth’s Orientation Center