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When it comes to viewing nebulae, galaxies, and other deep-sky objects, amateur astronomers on a budget have had two options. They can view with the naked eye through a telescope and perceive these spectacular objects as faint smudges that don’t even begin to capture their majesty, or they can capture long-exposure images with astrocameras and display the results on a view screen or computer, which robs the immediacy of the stargazing experience.Stand-alone telescope eyepieces with active light amplification do exist for a real-time viewing, but commercial products are pricey, costing hundreds to thousands of dollars. I wanted something I could use for the public-astronomy observat

In a few days, Las Vegas will be inundated with engineers, executives, investors, and members of the press—including me—for the annual Consumer Electronics Show, one of the largest tech events of the year. If you can dream it, there’s a good chance it’ll be on display at CES 2026 (though admittedly, much of this tech won’t necessarily make it to the mainstream). There will be a range of AI toys, AI notetakers, and “AI companions,” exoskeletons and humanoid robots, and health tech to track your hormones, brain activity, and...

I know now how the sparks can climb,in broadening arcs of ions—the heat they grow inside themselveslike some permission or belief.But at ten, it seemed mystical;their frown, glowing, then invisible.Gone. Save the odor of ozone.I was young and scared and alone.But the buzz and brightness begananew in darker shades of blue. Thenelectrons leaping spoke to me,not in words, but in dignity:how they escaped the box where theywere born. Joined in a plasma haze,they rose unafraid. So it seemed.I imagined them as sunbeams,th

Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your friends at IEEE Spectrum robotics. We also post a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next few months. Please send us your events for inclusion.ICRA 2026: 1–5 June 2026, VIENNAEnjoy today’s videos! I always love seeing robots progress from research projects to commercial products.

When Sergey Antonovich rediscovered a childhood passion for music, he found an unexpected application for his skills as an embedded systems engineer: building bespoke digital accordions.Antonovich admits the accordion isn’t the coolest instrument. It was chosen for him by his mother when he was 8, and he quickly lost interest as a teenager. While growing up close to Moscow, his adolescent passions were instead channeled into electronics and tinkering with gadgets in after-school classes. This led to a career working on environmental-monitoring devices, sensors for commercial drones, and most recently, sensor systems at autonomous-vehicle develop

Every September as we plan our January tech forecast issue, IEEE Spectrum’s editors survey their beats and seek out promising projects that could solve seemingly intractable problems or transform entire industries.Often these projects fly under the radar of the popular technology press, which these days seems more interested in the personalities driving Big Tech companies than in the technology itself. We go our own way here, getting out into the field to bring you news of the hidden gems that genuinely—as the IEEE motto goes—advance technology for the benefit of humanity.A look back at th

This article is part of our special report Top Tech 2026.Brain Chip Helps Blind People SeeElon Musk says his company

High school sophomore Abigail Merchant has made it her mission to use technology to reduce flood-related deaths. The 15-year-old lives in Orlando, Fla., a state where flooding is frequent in part because of its low elevation.The changing climate is increasing the risk. Warmer air holds more water, leading to heavier-than-usual rainfall and more flooding, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.Abigail MerchantSchool Orlando Science Middle High Charter, in FloridaGrade SophomoreHobbies

Artificial intelligence in 2025 was less about flashy demos and more about hard questions. What actually works? What breaks in unexpected ways? And what are the environmental and economic costs of scaling these systems further?It was a year in which generative AI slipped from novelty into routine use. Many people got accustomed to using AI tools on the job, getting their answers from AI search, and confiding in chatbots, for better or for worse. It was a year in which the tech giants hyped up their AI agents, and the general public seemed generally uninterested in using th

Last September, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) unleashed teams of robots on simulated mass-casualty scenarios, including an airplane crash and a night ambush. The robots’ job was to find victims and estimate the severity of their injuries, with the goal of helping human medics get to the people who need them the most.Kimberly Elenberg