In the Sun

Harnessing the power of the sun is something that Captain Planet made cool before it was the go-to for renewable energy. Solar-powered energy is quick and cheap, and can make for some really cool DIY projects. And for those of you wondering what you should do with your old sat ...more

I recently bought a new telescope and thought I would share a few images that I have taken with it. I am very new to astrophotography, but I hope to be able to post up some more images in the near future. Moon (at slightly gibbous phase): Crop of the Moon from the image abov ...more

In iOS 13, Apple is taking the Reminders app more seriously. With its long list of helpful new changes, the app finally stacks up to other task managers like Todoist or Wunderlist. One of the changes is small but mighty — the ability to add custom icons to lists. Doing so lets ...more

Apple's bringing big changes to your iPhone's lock screen in iOS 16, and one of those changes lets you pick an always-updating wallpaper for your local weather conditions. If you don't want to wait until the fall for the stable iOS 16 version and don't want to install any iOS ...more

There are many, many home remedies out there for relieving itchy mosquito bites. Everything from mud to banana peels and basil leaves to Alka-Seltzer tablets can help curb the itch. But before you even have to resort to any of those methods, you should be thinking about preven ...more

What's the first thing you would do once you realized you were lost in, say, a desert? If you're like me, you would immediately pull out your cell phone and start dialing every number. But what if you have no service? What if your battery is dead? If you make this survival so ...more

Sitting in a cubicle and never seeing sunlight during the workday is unpleasant to even think about—and sitting in a flourescent-light cube can have terrible effects on both our work performance and overall attitude. Yet there are ways to counteract the effects of cubicle sitt ...more

One of the big hurdles when equipping vehicles with sensors for autonomous driving is the cost. For example, the Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) sensors that power many versions of self-driving car technology are pricey, currently ranging from around several thousand dolla ...more

Day for Night courtesy of Videomaker.com Those 3 Words We Love to Hear, Day for Night (DFN). What better three words could a director ask to hear? No huge generators, no freezing temperatures, no vampire-style living... what's not to love? Are you perplexed? Well, long ago, ...more

It's hot this summer, but it's not that easy to cool down when you're on the go. You can't take an air conditioner with you, and a handheld fan will just tire you out, so you'll need to find more creative ways to cool down when you're on the go. One of these ways is a DIY sola ...more

While iPhone cameras these days are downright impressive, the same can't be said for the Camera app. In true Apple form, Camera is as simple as possible, forcing you to go third-party for pro-level features. With iOS 14, however, Apple adds a little extra professionalism, allo ...more

Coconut oil must be sent from the gods themselves, because this stuff is made of miracles. If you ever wondered why your mother always has it around, it's because she's smart enough to know the countless uses for it. Whether you need a beauty remedy, help with weight loss, or ...more

If we were to assign a theme for the 2019 edition of the Next Reality 30 (NR30), it might be something along the lines of, "What have you done for me lately?" Many of the top names in the industry from the 2018 edition remain the same, but their positions have shuffled. The p ...more

Graffiti is a great way of getting your message out to the masses. The earliest known graffiti dates back to 30,000 years ago and used the traditional apply-paint-to-wall technique. Though our paint now comes in cans and not from scavenged berries, the actual graffiti process ...more

Tardigrades are some of the toughest but least well-known creatures on our planet. These tiny animals, also called moss piglets or water bears, are definitely of this earth, but some can boast that they've also traveled to space. They have been found in the fossil record as l ...more

Halyomorpha halys, squash bug, shield bug ... What's in a name? A pest is a pest and the brown marmorated stink bug is a pest par excellence. Though some home gardeners are content to use insecticides, you'll find that it's generally easier to work with nature than against it. ...more

Last night was the so called "Supermoon," where the moon was at perigee, which is the closest orbital point to the Earth while the moon was in full phase. This makes the moon appear larger by up to about 14% and brighter by up to around 30%. I went out and used my 5-inch refra ...more

Google always sets aside a few cool software features to remain exclusive to its Pixel phones. But that's the thing about Android: software features can be ported to other devices. Developer Pranav Pandey, whose work we've covered before, took the Pixel 4a's wallpapers APK an ...more

There are several reasons why restaurant food tastes so good. One is that the cooks know how to make reductions, which involves cooking down large amounts of liquid until it becomes a pool of thick, glossy sauce. While this technique isn't hard to learn, it can be time-consumi ...more

Interested in taking a few snapshots of the likely auroras from the recent solar flare the Sun sent our way? It's reported that we'll have the biggest solar radiation storm in over 7 years thanks to the Earth-directed CME (coronal mass ejection). But if you live in the right ...more

This article will show you how to make a proportionally correct 1/187 (about) size Hubble Space Telescope. I tried to add as many details as possible, but it was hard at such a small size. It was really easy, but it did take a while to make. Here are some specs for the real H ...more

I hate being cold. That's why I live in Los Angeles. But, there are plenty of folks who are experiencing some pretty chilly temperatures this year, despite global warming, and one of the worst places affected is the garage. C'mon, who has a freakin' heater in their garage? St ...more

If you're like me, you were disappointed when NASA cut their human space flight program. No longer could children and adults in dead-end jobs dream of someday walking on the surface of the Moon or drinking floating globules of water through a straw. Homo sapiens as a species a ...more

"The best season for food is the worst season for cooking." These words, spoken by food blogger Dave Klopfenstein of Dave's Kitchen, couldn't be more true. As spring turns into summer, farmer's markets and grocery stores are loaded with fresh, juicy fruits and vegetables—but ...more

On average, about thirty percent of working Americans have called in sick at least once just to take a day off from work. If you are in the other goody-two-shoes seventy percent of the work force who've only called in sick for actual physical illness or have never actually use ...more

Aircraft equipped with ADS-B are constantly shouting their location into the radio void, along with other useful unauthenticated and unencrypted data. In this guide, we will make an ADS-B receiver using a Raspberry Pi with a software-defined radio (SDR) dongle, which we can us ...more

Two wonderful, wonderful things converge! Minecraft Forum's rushone2009 introduces the Bladecraft Project, a melding of Blade Runner and Minecraft. The current texture pack and map downloads contain no adventure or goal, just exploring and discovering movie references. Downloa ...more

You're walking down the street, minding your own business. Then you see it—a large, bright fireball in the near distance. A tremendous heat wave speeds towards you at one thousand miles an hour, and before you can think, before you can even blink, the extremely heated wind pus ...more

Samsung may have beaten Apple to the punch in introducing a system-wide dark theme with One UI, but they left out the ability to schedule night mode to kick in automatically. It's nothing that a little update can't fix, however, and that's exactly what Samsung just did to reme ...more

The long guarded veil of mystery surrounding Magic Leap for years was finally lifted last year when the company revealed its Magic Leap One device. But even now, as the company releases new apps and high profile partnerships, the company itself remains something of a cipher. ...more

The Shortcuts app can help you play the next unlistened podcast from one of the shows, but getting the latest unplayed episodes from your whole queue of shows in the Podcasts app is a little trickier. There is an easy way to do it on your iPhone, though, and you can even autom ...more

This week's AON has lots of conjunctions—be sure to observe them! Here it is: The Garradd comet is still in the sky! Here's how to observe it! January 9th: full moon January 10th: Ganymede and Europa transits in North America January 13th: Venus-Moon conjunction January 14th: ...more

Since the Geminid Meteor shower is intensifying more every year, grab your binoculars and lay down in a field to enjoy the show! If you are going to observe one day, do it on the peak: December 14th. The shower is caused by Palladian asteroid 3200 Phaethon. This, along with t ...more

Astronomy World will be posting a weekly blog post that informs fellow observers upcoming interesting events in the sky. These will include: Moon phases—It can be fun observing different phases of the moon (how much of the moon is dark). It is also fun observing the dark side ...more

One of the most annoying things about summer is mowing the lawn. Depending on how big your yard is, it can mean spending hours out in the hot sun while you could be doing something a lot more fun like watching the Olympics or making giant soap bubbles. Reclaim your summer with ...more

You're in your car. You've got a bag of piping-hot French fries with you. You want those fries in your mouth ASAP, but you also want to dip them in ketchup. So what do you do? If you're like most human beings, you squirt the ketchup onto a napkin or in a corner of your burger ...more

For newbies to astronomy, expensive equipment is an understandable deterrent. But with some thorough Google searching, you can find plenty of How-To's for making your own tools for less. Below are a few sites with several cool projects to offer. Sky & Telescope Sky & Telesco ...more

With the new iPhones coming out, many see the current mobile market as just another epic battle between Samsung and Apple. But let's not forget there are many other phones that run Android. And when you start to sift through the specs, one stands out as a competitive alternati ...more

Although mowing is key to keeping your lawn healthy and good looking, it isn't anything worth jumping up and down for when it comes time to doing it. As it turned out, the first time I mowed my lawn wasn't nearly as fun or exciting as Hank Hill made it out to be. Maybe it was ...more

My husband's and my daily schedules are constantly changing. Frankly, it's complete chaos sometimes, so I can't plan to have elaborate dinners on the table at six o'clock every day. And by the time we actually get to eating in the evening, we've become so hungry that our moods ...more

National Ignition Facility What is the NIF? Located in California, the NIF is a large facility housing two humongous lasers. The facility is part of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Basically, NIF's main purpose is to focus lasers on a small, compressed amount of h ...more