Time Zones

When working with date services, you can specify time zones. The Earth is divided into 24 standard time zones, one for every 15 degrees of longitude. Using the time zone including Greenwich, England (known as Greenwich Mean Time, or GMT) as the starting point, the time is increased by an hour for each time zone east of Greenwich and decreases by an hour for each time zone west of Greenwich. The time difference between a time zone and the time zone including Greenwich, England (GMT) is referred to as the raw offset.

The following table identifies the different time zones for the Earth and the raw offset for each zone from Greenwich, England. The effects of daylight savings time are ignored in this table.

ID	Raw Offset	Name
MIT	-11	Midway Islands Time
HST	-10	Hawaii Standard Time
AST	-9	Alaska Standard Time
PST	-8	Pacific Standard Time
PNT	-7	Phoenix Standard Time
MST	-7	Mountain Standard Time
CST	-6	Central Standard Time
EST	-5	Eastern Standard Time
IET	-5	Indiana Eastern Standard Time
PRT	-4	Puerto Rico and U.S. Virgin Islands Time
CNT	-3.5	Canada Newfoundland Time
AGT	-3	Argentina Standard Time
BET	-3	Brazil Eastern Time
GMT	0	Greenwich Mean Time
ECT	+1	European Central Time
CAT	+2	Central Africa Time
EET	+2	Eastern European Time
ART	+2	(Arabic) Egypt Standard Time
EAT	+3	Eastern African Time
MET	+3.5	Middle East Time
NET	+4	Near East Time
PLT	+5	Pakistan Lahore Time
IST	+5.5	India Standard Time
BST	+6	Bangladesh Standard Time
VST	+7	Vietnam Standard Time
CTT	+8	China Taiwan Time
JST	+9	Japan Standard Time
ACT	+9.5	Australian Central Time
AET	+10	Australian Eastern Time
SST	+11	Solomon Standard Time
NST	+12	New Zealand Standard Time