Buying Hard Drives

My slide digitizing project is now producing data by the gigabyte. As expected I am filling up the drives on my desktop computer. Not that there was a lot of space available in the first place, less than 50Gb was clear on the primary data drive. Time to buy a new hard drive! At least when I built the computer I bought a gaming cabinet with plenty of drive bays.

Hard Drives
The hard drives of my desktop computer, Darker View is in there somewhere.
I face the agonizing decision… When dealing with critical data, what brand and model of hard drive do I buy? I make multiple copies, but still, a failure can cost me days of work between backups. What hard drive do I buy for my photos?

The reviews on Amazon and other retailers are nearly useless on hard drives. There will always be failures of devices like this, and angry buyers are very likely to leave negative reviews. Thus the data looks very skewed and it is hard to evaluate the reliability in any sort on meaningful way. Much less compare one drive to another.

There is real data! The cloud storage provider BackBlaze runs thousands upon thousands of hard drives. Obviously hard drive failure rates are of paramount importance to them and they closely track each type of drive they buy. Fortunately for the rest of us they publish this data and allow us to see what does, and does not work.

There are several obvious lessons in the data… Stay away from the 3Tb drive from Seagate and to a lesser extent the 3Tb drives from Western Digital. Several 4Tb models appear to be far more reliable. The failure rates on the worst drives can be upwards of 20% to 30% per year, while the better drives well under 5%. Those rates may seem high, you need to consider the hard use these drives get in a data center.

Based on this I have a new HGST 4Tb drive installed in my computer. All looks good so far, a trouble free installation and my photo collection copied over without issue. Now to see how long the drive lasts when I put some hours on it.

The Moon and Jupiter

The Moon and Jupiter will rise together this evening of January 26th. The Moon will rise first, around 20:40HST, followed by Jupiter half an hour later at 21:25HST. Over the course of the night the Moon will slowly approach Jupiter, closing to about 4° by dawn.

The following evening, January 27th, the order will be reversed, with Jupiter rising first at 21:21HST and the Moon rising twenty minutes later at 21:40HST, with about the same separation of 4°.

Afocal Luna

With a few public outreach events this last week I had a few opportunities to hold my phone up to the eyepiece and shoot a few shots of a waxing Moon. The iPhone 5S does have a notably better camera than my old 3S. The afocal method does provide some nice snapshots of the Moon.

As usual I demonstrated the technique to our viewers, showing them how to use their phone to shoot the Moon. The result? Big smiles and happy folks, thrilled to have some great Moon photos of their own.

Afocal Luna
The Moon approaching full, afocal photograph with an iPhone 5S and a small refractor

Five Bright Planets in the Dawn

All five planets that are visible to the unaided eye can be found in the dawn for the next few weeks. Jupiter, Saturn, Venus and Mars have been visible in the dawn for some time now. Arriving late to the party is Mercury, just rising out of the glow of dawn. Mercury is headed for maximum elongation on February 7th, rising to 24° ahead of the rising Sun. The line of planets will persist for a week or two after that as Mercury drops back into the glow of dawn after elongation.

Zodiacal Light
False dawn, actually zodiacal light, rising over Mauna Kea
Highest in the sky is Jupiter, shining at -2.3 magnitude and rising before 10pm. Mars rises next, around 1am, seen as a ruddy red object, much dimmer at +1 magnitude. Saturn will rise around 3:30am in Scorpio near Antares, shining at +0.5 magnitude. Venus rises around 4:45am and will be quite obvious, the brightest of the five at -4 magnitude. Last will be Mercury, currently rising just before 6am and shining at +1.2 magnitude. It will rise earlier and earlier as it approaches maximum elongation, rising at 5:20am on February 7th. As Mercury reaches it highest it will be only 4° from Venus.

Together the five planets neatly outline the ecliptic, the plane of our solar system revealed by simply connecting the dots across the sky. As dawn approaches, but before the start of twilight around 6am, look for the zodiacal light, the bright glow of interplanetary dust also seen along the ecliptic.

Caltech Researchers Find Evidence of a Real Ninth Planet

Caltech press release…

Caltech researchers have found evidence of a giant planet tracing a bizarre, highly elongated orbit in the outer solar system. The object, which the researchers have nicknamed Planet Nine, has a mass about 10 times that of Earth and orbits about 20 times farther from the sun on average than does Neptune (which orbits the sun at an average distance of 2.8 billion miles). In fact, it would take this new planet between 10,000 and 20,000 years to make just one full orbit around the sun.

Planet 9 Artist's Concept
This artistic rendering shows the distant view from Planet Nine back towards the sun. The planet is thought to be gaseous, similar to Uranus and Neptune. Hypothetical lightning lights up the night side. Credit: Caltech/R. Hurt (IPAC)
The researchers, Konstantin Batygin and Mike Brown, discovered the planet’s existence through mathematical modeling and computer simulations but have not yet observed the object directly.

“This would be a real ninth planet,” says Brown, the Richard and Barbara Rosenberg Professor of Planetary Astronomy. “There have only been two true planets discovered since ancient times, and this would be a third. It’s a pretty substantial chunk of our solar system that’s still out there to be found, which is pretty exciting.”

Brown notes that the putative ninth planet—at 5,000 times the mass of Pluto—is sufficiently large that there should be no debate about whether it is a true planet. Unlike the class of smaller objects now known as dwarf planets, Planet Nine gravitationally dominates its neighborhood of the solar system. In fact, it dominates a region larger than any of the other known planets—a fact that Brown says makes it “the most planet-y of the planets in the whole solar system.”

Batygin and Brown describe their work in the current issue of the Astronomical Journal and show how Planet Nine helps explain a number of mysterious features of the field of icy objects and debris beyond Neptune known as the Kuiper Belt.

“Although we were initially quite skeptical that this planet could exist, as we continued to investigate its orbit and what it would mean for the outer solar system, we become increasingly convinced that it is out there,” says Batygin, an assistant professor of planetary science. “For the first time in over 150 years, there is solid evidence that the solar system’s planetary census is incomplete.”

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Cultural Misappropration

The Hawaiian islands are quite interesting in many respects. Here no single ethnicity has an outright majority. The history behind this makes for fascinating reading. The sugar industry created a need for agricultural labor that was the driving force resulting in the mass importation of several cultures, primarily Chinese, Japanese and Filipino, and to a lesser extent several others. In addition to the original Hawaiian inhabitants and later Americans immigrants the islands became quite culturally mixed.

Navigational Heiau
Upright stones of the navigational heiau north of Mahukona
The largest group now present are those of Asian decent making up 37% of the population. This is while Caucasians make up only 26% of the population and native Hawaiians and Pacific islanders represent 10% in total. The resultant cultural mix is something that many, including myself, enjoy about the islands. Throughout the year you are exposed to cultural ideas, language, the foods and festivals, of half a dozen cultures.

While there are many benefits of several coexisting cultures, there are issues as well. Hawaiʻi is in many ways ahead of much of the world. These cultures have, for the most part, learned to coexist in ways that much of the world is still struggling with. This is not to say that everything is perfect. Controversy has a way of revealing issues that otherwise often avoid exposure, and we have seen a bit of controversy as of late. There are existing issues that have long been present, but are avoided as they are neither simple nor easily resolved. It is no surprise that the issues have stemmed from the clash of cultures that have landed on these islands across the centuries.

It is the first arrivals here, the Hawaiians, that often see themselves as having lost the most with the arrival of so many immigrants from various other nations. The issues surrounding Mauna Kea have given Hawaiian activists a new rallying point and increased visibility that they have taken full advantage of to express their cause.

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Laupāhoehoe Charter School Star Party

It was a great school star party.

Setting Up the 'Scopes
Preparing for the crowd at Laupāhoehoe Charter School
I worry a bit about helping out with a school star party sometimes. When I drum up a few volunteers and telescopes for an event I wonder if we will have clear skies and a good audience. These great guys are coming because I asked them. Will it be worth the effort of the volunteers to pack a ‘scope and drive across the island?

Nothing is more frustrating than a crowd of kids wanting to see through the telescope and all you can show them is the bottom of a cloud. I was worrying again as I left Waimea under a solid overcast. Maybe it will be better on the other side of the island? My fear is justified by past experience, the windward side is often cloudy or even rainy in the evening. Arriving at Honokaʻa it was still overcast, maybe down the coast? Over Laupāhoehoe it was clear! How can this be? We got really lucky.

The next worry was the crowd. While setting up there were a dozen telescopes but only a handful of folks waiting for us. But as it got dark the people kept arriving, a steady stream of students and families. A large area of blankets appeared, covering the playing field. William and the other organizers had done a great job of putting out the message to the community, we had a great crowd.

With a quarter Moon we had a good target even before it got dark. Better yet, there were no lights on the field and only a small town below us. After the light faded it was pretty dark on the field, dark enough to show nebulae and star clusters in all their glory.

I spent much of the evening on the Orion Nebula. It looked great in the ‘scope and I could tell the tale of star formation occurring in the clouds of gas visible in the eyepiece. I took a few iPhone photos of the Moon, demonstrating how it was done. The quarter phase was revealing great topography along the terminator.

In the end my worries were for naught. Everything went very well. A lot of happy kids and parents, presented with a good view of our endlessly fascinating universe.