The timezone on our boxes is set to Etc/UCT (possibly a distro default). (psql 8.1.4) => select to_char(current_timestamp, 'HH24:MI:SS TZ'); to_char -------------- 09:05:48 UCT (1 row) => select '09:05:48 UCT'::time; ERROR: invalid input syntax for type time: "09:05:48 UCT" UTC works, of course: => select '09:05:48 UTC'::time; time ---------- 09:05:48 (1 row) Is this behaviour expected? Desirable? Thanks Julian