• iOS 17.2: December 11


• iOS 16.2: December 13


• iOS 15.2: December 13

The promise of a “car-free” 2028 Los Angeles Olympics could be slipping away as a $3.3-billion wish list of transportation projects remains almost 95 percent unfunded. 

As Rachel Uranga explains in Governing, “Local officials have a litany of projects they want to complete ahead of 2028, from adding charging infrastructure to improving Metro stations close to venues, but so far attempts to secure federal funds have been hit-and-miss.”

With four years to go until the event, only 34 of the 50 Olympic venues have been confirmed. Due to federal security regulations, there will be no parking immediately near most venues.

Unlike in Paris, where the city’s subway system shuttled most Olympics-goers to their destinations, “The workhorse of the L.A. Olympics will likely be buses.” According to Metro, “There will be additional bus shuttles, bus lanes and other key projects and upgrades to make the Games easy on visitors and residents.”

But the short-staffed agency will need to hire more operators and increase service frequency to effectively move the millions of visitors expected for the Games, plus the commuters and residents who regularly rely on transit. A lack of fast and convenient transit to Olympic venues could also lead to a flood of ridesharing vehicles creating more traffic and congestion.

• Los Angeles
• Car-Free
• Olympics
• 2028 Olympics
• Sustainable Transportation
• Public Transit

A very rare dime just sold for $506,250. According to GreatCollections president Ian Russell, it fetched this eye-popping price in an online auction on October 27. The dime itself is now worth about five million times its original value of 10 cents.

The coin was made in 1975 by the US Mint in San Francisco, California shows President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and is one of only two known coins that exists without a distinctive “S” mark. This marking indicates that it was struck at the San Francisco Mint. 

[Related: Archeologists uncover hoard of gold coins linked to ancient mercenaries.]

It is easy to tell where in the United States a coin was minted. There is a small capital letter on the heads side of the coin. It will either have a D for Denver, P for Philadelphia, S for San Francisco, or W for West Point. 

In 1975, the mint made over 2.8 million special uncirculated “proof” sets of six coins that were sold for $7. Over the years, collections discovered that two of the dimes were missing this mint marking. 

In 2019, the only other known example of one of these “no S” proof dimes from 1975 sold at an auction for $456,000. It was sold again months later to a private collector.

The dime was sold by three anonymous sisters in Ohio who inherited the dime when their brother passed away. He had kept it stored in a bank vault for over 40 years. According to the Associated Press, the sisters told Russel that he and their mother bought the first error coin 1978 for $18,200–about $90,000 today. Their parents viewed the rare coin as a financial safety net.

[Related: Will digital dollars ever replace hard currency in the US?]

While there are possibly more examples of this rare type of dime, they would only be found in the 1975 proof sets and not rustling around in pocket change, according to Russell. 

The post Ultra-rare dime sells for $506,250 appeared first on Popular Science.

• iPhone 14, iPhone 14 Plus, and iPhone SE


• First-generation Apple Pencil


• Magic Keyboard with Numeric Keypad (No Touch ID)

An analysis of the 100 largest U.S. cities reveals the “greenest” urban centers based on 28 metrics including air and water quality, greenhouse gas emissions, transportation patterns and walkability, green job opportunities, and more.

As Samanda Dorger notes in The Street, “Many U.S. cities have recognized the economic advantages of sustainability efforts such as clean energy, recycling, composting, urban agriculture and clean transportation.”

According to the list, the greenest city in the United States is San Diego. California cities take six of the top 10 spots, with San Francisco ranking fourth, San Jose fifth, and the smaller communities of Fremont and Irvine rounding out the list.

Other top green cities are Washington, D.C., Honolulu, Seattle, and Portland. “Cities that ranked in the bottom five were: Glendale, Ariz., Hialeah Fla., Houston, Mesa, Ariz. and Baton Rouge, La.”

• Green Cities
• Environmental Policy
• Conservation
• Air Quality
• Water Quality
• Green Jobs
• Sustainability
• Clean Energy
• Renewable Energy
• Greenhouse Gas Emissions
• Climate Change
• Resilience

Get ready for a blast from the past with a futuristic twist. The thumb drive recently rose from the dead to challenge cloud storage as the best and cheapest way to store photos, videos, and files. But this drive isn’t like that one old rotting in your desk drawer.

This dual USB drive has USB-A and USB-C ends, 1TB of storage, and fast transfer speeds. Today (Oct. 27) only, you can order one for $74.97 (reg. $109.99) and save 31 percent.

Believe it, baby. Many users are fed up paying for cloud storage, sometimes upwards of $10 monthly, for a similar amount of space as this 1TB flash drive. You could ditch the fees and back up your files this way instead.

It’s almost as easy to clear space on your devices as it is on the cloud. Simply plug the USB-A or USB-C end into your phone, tablet, or laptop, find your file manager, and move photos, videos, or documents onto the drive. 

This high-speed flash drive has a 30Mbps transfer speed, so you won’t have to wait hours to move files. You could transfer a Microsoft Word document in just a few seconds, a photo collection in about 15, or a 1GB video in around 33 seconds.

If you’re looking for a cheaper alternative to cloud storage, it might be time to kick it old school with this USB-A and USB-C flash drive. Grab one for $74.97 (reg. $109.99) until October 27 at 11:59 p.m. with no coupon needed.

Dual USB-C + USB-A 3.2 High Speed Flash Drive (1TB) – $74.97

See Deal

StackSocial prices subject to change.

The post This dual USB drive might be the death of cloud storage appeared first on Popular Science.

It may not be the most romantic thing to say, but kissing accomplishes very little from a biological standpoint. If anything, a smooch’s ability to facilitate the spread of communicable diseases can do more harm than good. But according to a review of humanity’s evolutionary journey, there was a time when kisses potentially signified a more hygienic—and hairier—ape. 

Adriano Lameira, a primatologist and evolutionary psychologist at the University of Warwick, recently conducted a comprehensive examination of existing hypotheses behind kissing’s potential origins, such as nursing infants and pre-chewing food for young apes. And while Lameira’s conclusion also offers far more utilitarian beginnings than today’s sign of love, he theorizes kissing may come from adults cleaning each other.

“[K]issing isn’t a derived signal of affection in humans, it instead represents a surviving devolved… form of primate grooming that conserved its ancestral form, context, and function,” Lameira argued in a paper published in the journal, Evolutionary Anthropology. 

Today’s primates usually finish grooming sessions by protruding their lips and carefully sucking excess debris, insects, and parasites caught in another ape’s fur. According to Lameira, this moment marks the conclusion of an often “time- and labor-intensive ritual” that forges and reinforces social bonds. But cleaning sessions are only long and focused as an ape’s body hair allows.

[Related: Ancient Mesopotamian texts show when and why humans first kissed.]

Grooming logically took less time and effort as human ancestors gradually evolved less fur over thousands of years, but Lameria argues these rudimentary kisses remained social staples despite being less of a health necessity. He theorizes these subsequently “shorter sessions would have predictably retained a final ‘kissing’ stage,” until it eventually became the “only vestige of a once ritualistic behavior for signaling and strengthening social and kinship ties in an ancestral ape.”

As Phys.org explained on October 26th, however, it’s important to note that kissing isn’t universal across human cultures. A 2015 study in the journal American Anthropologist cites that just 46-percent of 168 surveyed cultures around the world maintain romantic and social kissing practices, while indigenous hunter-gatherer communities even view kisses as somewhat gross. Not only that, but many non-ape primates engage in different social bonding rituals. The capuchin monkey, for example, sticks their fingers in the nostrils and eyes of their closest community members.

Lameira, however, takes time to note such exceptions in their paper. He also cites how grooming behaviors traditionally appear in terrestrial-based apes more prone to parasites than their tree-dwelling relatives such as capuchins, potentially further supporting his theory. Either way, Lameira expressed hope in his conclusion that the “final kiss hypothesis” will inspire further research and today’s great ape grooming behaviors, especially those with varying amounts of fur.

“For future evolutionary insight into the evolution of human kissing, and other behaviors uniquely exhibited by our species, it will be important to retain in mind and ponder the influence of the broader socio-ecological, cognitive, and communicative context of human ancestors,” he wrote.

The post The origins of kissing may have a lot to do with body hair appeared first on Popular Science.

Members of the Coalition for Federal Home Loan Bank Reform argue that the Federal Home Loan Bank (FHLB) system has strayed significantly from its housing mission, prioritizing profits over affordable housing development. In a new Shelterforce article, authors Sharon Cornelissen, Jared Gaby-Biegel, and Brian Stromberg of the Coalition for FHLB Reform detail how the system's public subsidies ($7.3 billion in 2024) primarily benefit large financial institutions rather than supporting housing initiatives.

“Federal Home Loan Banks have gone astray. But they could once again return to their housing mission,” write the authors, pointing to a troubling shift in the system's priorities. The analysis reveals that while the FHLB system paid $3.4 billion in dividends to member banks in 2023, only $752 million was allocated to affordable housing programs.

The authors highlight a stark example of this mission drift: advances to companies with “little discernible link to housing,” like insurance companies. One such company is Athene Annuity. “Athene had $11.9 billion in outstanding advances from the Federal Home Loan Bank of Des Moines through June 2024.” Such practices raise questions about the system's current priorities, especially given that as of 2022, 42 percent of FHLB members hadn't originated a single mortgage in the past five years.

The Coalition for FHLB Reform proposes several reforms:

1. Tie FHLB membership to concrete housing and community development activities
2. Increase affordable housing contributions from 10% to 20% of net income
3. Expand access for community development financial institutions
4. Support innovative models like shared-equity homeownership

“Millions of Americans, many of them Black, Latino and/or of younger generations, feel they may never own a home," they note. “We can no longer allow this trillion-dollar GSE to sit on its hands, while housing costs continue to rise.”

These recommendations align with recent calls for reform from the Federal Housing Finance Agency, U.S. Treasury, and members of Congress.

[RELATED ARTICLE: Blockbusting the Big Boys: Bill Would Ban Hedge Funds from Owning Single-Family Homes]

• housing finance
• shared equity homeownership
• Banks
• Affordable Housing

You’ve heard of Tinder, the app that’s supposed to help you find your soulmate … or something like that. Well, this language-learning app does the same thing, except it’s not about love; it’s about speaking in tongues.

Picture this: You’re learning Spanish, and it’s going great so far. The only problem is that you don’t know anyone else who speaks Spanish to practice with. That’s when you download the HelloTalk app and meet tons of native speakers. Save 40 percent on a VIP lifetime subscription here, making it $119.99 (reg. $199.99).

HelloTalk stops you from succumbing to the stereotype of, “I used to know some Spanish, but I forgot everything because I never used it.” Instead, meet some Spanish speakers online and chat with them through text, voice messages, or video calls—one-on-one or in groups.

Here’s how HelloTalk works:

1. Browse potential language partners by location, gender, or level of seriousness (it’s almost like a dating app).
2. Connect with anyone you’d like.
3. Strike up a conversation in English (your native language) or Spanish (their native language).

When you’re chatting in Spanish, you get to practice your vocabulary, learn new words, and maybe even discover some things about Spanish or Mexican culture if your new friend is willing to share. Built-in translation and pronunciation tools help you keep up with the conversation.

Since your friend is hoping to learn some English from you, you might also chat in English from time to time. If they ever make mistakes, don’t be afraid to leave corrections — you’re helping them improve their language skills.

To enhance your learning even more, join a HelloTalk Live session, a live stream hosted by an expert teacher. You’ll be surprised how much more language and cultural information you might uncover—far more than basic lessons from other language apps.

Make friends around the world and grow your language skills with HelloTalk VIP, now $119.99 (reg. $199.99). You won’t find a better price anywhere else.

HelloTalk VIP Plan: Lifetime Subscription – $119.99

See Deal

StackSocial prices subject to change.

The post Tinder for language learners? It’s a thing appeared first on Popular Science.

It’s time to cast your vote in an important and batty election–the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) Bat Beauty Contest. In commemoration of Bat Week (October 24-31), the bureau will post photos of bats on their Facebook and Instagram accounts and ask you to vote for the best-looking one. All of the bats are part of wild populations that live on land managed by the public agency and are photographed by wildlife technicians. 

[Related: Scientists are confounded by the sex lives of serontine bats.]

Round 2 begins today, featuring a match-up between a hoary bat named Hoary Potter and a long-eared myotis named Honey Bunches of MyOtis. This week’s upcoming contests will feature the last week’s winners, who will be announced in the coming days. The first round also saw a Hollywood themed match-up between a myotis bat named Robert Battinson squaring off against western small-footed bat, Batt Damon. Baylor Swift and Lestat, both western small-footed bats, also met up in what the BLM called the “match-up of the century.”

The event is more than just a spooky alternative to Fat Bear Week. It’s meant to raise awareness about the planet’s only flying mammal. There are over 1,400 species of bats, or almost 20 percent of all mammal species. They also can be found almost everywhere on Earth, even in desert and polar regions. You can use Bat Week’s state bat database to look up what bat species live near you. 

Bats play a critical ecological role as plant pollinators and through eating insects that can threaten crops and forests around the world. According to Bat Week, one bat can eat up to its body weight in insects every night. Only three species of bats eat animal blood, with two  specializing on bird blood. Other bats eat pollen, nectar, or fruit.

“There’s a lot of fear and misconceptions around bats,” Bureau of Land Management wildlife technician Emma Busk told the Associated Press.  “But less than 1% of all bat populations actually carry rabies, and the bat-to-human disease transmission is actually really low.”

The Bat Beauty Contest will continue throughout this week with the winner announced on Thursday October 31. 

The post Robert Battinson, Batlor Swift, and more face off in Bat Beauty Contest appeared first on Popular Science.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) opened a probe into Tesla’s “Full Self-Driving” system after reports of multiple crashes involving the system, including one that killed a pedestrian.

According to an article by Michel Euler for the Associated Press, the agency will investigate the system’s ability to  “detect and respond appropriately to reduced roadway visibility conditions, and if so, the contributing circumstances for these crashes” in roughly 2.4 million Tesla cars from between 2016 and 2024.

The company insists drivers are meant to stay alert while using the system, but are promising to release fully automated robotaxis in 2026. The investigation could prevent the NHTSA from approving new driverless vehicles without steering wheels or pedals. For now, deploying autonomous features in its existing models would fall under the jurisdiction of state agencies, and no federal rules aimed specifically at autonomous vehicles exist.

Tesla was forced to recall hundreds of thousands of vehicles with “Full Self-Driving” systems earlier this year to correct issues including running stop signs at low speeds.

• Tesla
• Autonomous Vehicles
• Full Self-Driving
• Self-Driving Cars
• Road Safety
• Traffic Safety
• National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
• Robotaxis

Hydra, specifically Hydra vulgaris, are unassuming creatures. At their largest, the freshwater cnidarians (relatives of jellyfish) are just about a centimeter long. Their miniscule bodies are simple, unadorned tubes with a plume of tentacles at one end. Yet their simplicity belies a stunning secret: They don’t seem to age. It’s an observation that defies scientific expectation and evolutionary theory, and has led some to describe the polyp species as biologically immortal–as in yes, they die (of disease, predation, starvation), but not out of any cellular inevitability. 

Initially, Daniel Martínez set out to disprove the hype. The biologist–now a professor at Pomona College, but then a graduate student at the State University of New York, Stony Brook–believed that with careful observation and experimentation he could catch a hydra in the act of growing older, or senescing. “I thought…there’s no way you can escape aging as a multicellular organism,” he tells Popular Science. 

For four years (a long time for such small organisms) Martínez looked closely for hallmarks of decline in hydra he kept in the lab–signs they were less reproductive or more likely to die over time. Yet he didn’t find any. “The results provide no evidence for aging in hydra… Hydra may have indeed escaped senescence and may be potentially immortal,” he conceded in the resulting 1998 study. In follow-up research spanning eight years, Martínez and colleagues found identical results. He’s kept individual hydra alive for 12 years at a time, without noting any markers of age. He would’ve happily done it for longer, too, had life not gotten in the way of his research on immortality. “I decided to do the Pacific Crest Trail, so I couldn’t continue [maintaining the hydra] because I wanted to hike for five months,” he says. 

Amid all the observations Martínez did manage to collect, he eventually admitted to himself, “these things are not dying,” he says. The skeptic was convinced–with one caveat: “We have to be careful when we use the word ‘immortal’, because we kill them all the time in my lab,” he says. “They’re not really immortal [as in invincible], they just don’t seem to register time.” 

Hydra are a stand-out example of the phenomenon, but they aren’t necessarily unique in their resistance to time. A handful of animals display unexpected longevity and negligible aging. Slowly, science has revealed details of and theories for the varied ways these organisms avoid growing old. 

Hydra reproduce both sexually and asexually, creating buds that grow into identical clones. Yet they don’t just survive on through these duplicates, but also as individuals. Why? “They have a lot of stem cells,” says Celina Juliano, a molecular and cellular biologist at the University of California, Davis. Their basic bodies are almost entirely made up of undifferentiated, “plastic” cells that can continually divide and self-replace much more readily than, say, a human heart cell. Hydra can recover and regenerate from nearly any injury, as long as a piece of their central body is intact. Every 20 days or so, an individual H. vulgaris is renewed, composed of entirely different (though identical) cells from before, like a tiny Theseus’ ship. 

But still, that leaves the question of how their individual cells are so resilient. “That their stem cells endlessly make new cells is remarkable,” says Juliano. With few exceptions (e.g. Henrietta Lacks’ HeLa cells), other animal cell lineages have a set number of times they can divide. With each subsequent multiplication, they accrue damage, lose telomere length, and age. How, exactly, hydra cells avoid petering out remains a mystery, though researchers are making strides. They do have active telomerase, the enzyme that allows the long, protective tails of a chromosome to regenerate, says Juliano–so that’s likely one piece of the puzzle. Another seems to be hydra’s ability to keep wily, jumping genes suppressed, according to 2020 research from Juliano’s lab. Through further DNA analysis, she’s hoping to uncover more clues. 

Counter to hydra, Greenland sharks are massive–measuring up to 24 feet long and weighing more than 2,000 lbs. They’re the largest species of shark, reining over cold, far northern oceans as apex predators. They’re also the longest-lived, known vertebrate species. One 2016 study dated the eye lenses collected from the bodies of 28 female sharks and found that the oldest was about 400 years old, and possibly more than 500 years old. The sharks don’t even seem to enter their reproductive years until around 150–one and a half centuries of shark childhood and adolescence. 

There are likely many contributing variables for how these big fish manage to live hundreds of years, but one factor is their ability to repair their DNA, says Arne Sahm, a computational biologist and bioinformatician at the Ruhr-University Bochum in Germany. Sahm and his colleagues have been studying Greenland sharks’ genetic codes. They’ve found that the animals have an exceptionally large genome, with many duplicated genes. Some of these duplicates are genes that code for DNA-repairing and cancer-suppressing proteins. “The idea is pretty simple, if you have more genes involved in this process it allows you to survive better and have more DNA repair,” Sahm tells Popular Science.

Other research has identified that the enzyme proteins encoded by the sharks’ DNA are uniquely robust, maintaining consistently high levels of activity, even over decades. Generally, as animals age, their enzyme activity and overall metabolisms show, but Greenland sharks don’t seem to experience the same degradation. 

Hydra are not the only seemingly ageless cnidarians. Turritopsis dornhii, otherwise known as the immortal jellyfish, have their own, unique way of subverting senescence. Instead of staying continually in the polyp phase, like hydra, and swapping out their individual cells, T. dornhii grows into a mature medusa and then, miraculously, reorganizes and reverts to its former juvenile self in a phenomenon that looks a whole lot like aging backwards called “transdifferentiation.”

As with hydra, maintaining long telomeres seems to be part of what enables this miraculous, circular cycle. And as with Greenland sharks, these jellies are masters of genetic and cellular repair. 

Though not everyone is convinced Turritopsis’ trick amounts to the same sort of marvel as what the hydra manages to do. In Martínez’ view, the jellyfish’s cellular reorganization is much more akin to asexual reproduction–producing a clonal offspring–than it is to continued survival of an individual. “It regenerates into a ball of cells and from there it produces a new polyp, but that medusa from before has disappeared,” he explains. “It’s fascinating, but it’s a different phenomenon… the degeneration that happens, that could be called aging,” he adds.

In Juliano’s view though, what happens in hydra and in Turritopsis could indicate that many other related species also abide by their own rules of senescence and regeneration. “In cnidarians, maybe it’s not exceptional,” she says–maybe it’s just a matter of what has and hasn’t been studied. And perhaps that extends to other clades as well. Some planarians, or flatworms, seem to have a similar, cnidarian-like ability to infinitely regenerate. Limited longevity studies have been done, says Juliano, “but I know people sort of just view them as essentially immortal.”

Naked mole rats, the nearly hairless, subterranean, eusocial rodents with a hierarchical structure that resembles ants and bees stand out in many regards. One item on their long list of quirks is their lifespan. Relative to other rodents (and small-bodied vertebrates in general), mole rats live remarkably long lives. They’re known to survive up to 40 years, 12 years longer than their closest rodent competition, the African porcupine which lives up to about 28 years.

Though this is infinity years away from immortality, mole rats, like hydra, approach their later years with no noticeable declines in health or physiology. Part of this is their relatively slow metabolisms. Naked mole rats breathe very slowly, their cells are resistant to oxygen deprivation, and they have such low baseline body temperatures that they’re effectively ectotherms (or coldblooded). Then there are other factors at play. 

Mole rats are particularly impressive for their ability to ward off cancer, a disease of old age, which is rampant among other rodents. Research indicates they do this via “early contact inhibition,” says Sahm. When their cells begin to grow dense and bump up against each other–as in early tumor formation–it triggers a mechanism that stops cell growth in its tracks. The compound that sets off the cellular anti-cancer cascade, hyaluronic acid, is a common ingredient in beauty and anti-aging products–though its touted function in serums and creams is much different from what it does within mole rat cells. 

Some tortoises live so long that they manage to become celebrities in their second century. But it’s not just a select few testudines that show a remarkable ability to evade death. Many species of turtle and tortoise display negligible aging, particularly in captivity, according to 2022 research published in Science. Three quarters of the 52 species surveyed showed essentially no senescence. In practice, what this means is that year to year their risk of mortality didn’t increase, says Fernando Colchero, a statistical demographer at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany.   

However, this trend only held true for animals held in zoos and aquariums. “In the wild, rates are much steeper than in the zoos,” Colchero says. This, he argues, illustrates the same sort of trend that human life expectancy over the past century shows–when you improve the environmental conditions of an organism, it can live a much longer, healthier life. How, exactly, turtles and tortoises reduce or eliminate aging when kept in captivity remains an open question, Colchero notes, but it’s clear there’s an interplay between environment and senescence.

Lobsters are yet another incredibly long-lived aquatic animal, with some individuals estimated to be well over 100 years old. In addition to aging very slowly, the crustaceans also never stop growing (the official world record-holder was 44 pounds). They’ll get bigger and bigger until all that growth and molting becomes too much to bear. Constructing and shedding ever-larger exoskeletons eventually becomes too energy-intensive, and they eventually fail to molt and die. Though this isn’t senescence in any traditionally understood, evolutionary sense, where cells degrade over time, it is an increase in mortality risk as a byproduct of advancing maturity. 

And among the shelled sea creatures, the lobster isn’t the most impressive. Ocean quahogs, a species of clam, can live more than 500 years. One particular specimen, dubbed Ming (after the Chinese dynasty during which it was born), was found off the coast of Iceland in 2006. Counting growth bands on the shell revealed the mollusk had survived 507 annual cycles, before being killed for research. It is the longest-lived, non-colonial animal ever discovered.

The post Are any animals truly ‘immortal’? These creatures defy biological time. appeared first on Popular Science.

All over the world, beliefs and myths about the afterlife often manifest as ghost stories tied to specific locations. In the United States, hundreds of historic hotels lay claim to purported hauntings, often by former guests who checked in… and never checked out.

An article for Fox 40 by Amber Coakley and Addy Bink highlights the most haunted hotels in America, according to the National Trust for Historic Preservation. “The oldest on the list is Concord’s Colonial Inn in Concord, Massachusetts, which has been serving guests since 1716. Part of the hotel served as a hospital during the Revolutionary War, and it is rumored some of those 18th-century patients never left the inn.”

Other prominent hotels on the list include San Diego’s Hotel del Coronado, which regularly appears in stories about haunted lodgings. The list also includes hotels in Prescott, Arizona, St. Augustine, Florida, New Orleans, Louisiana, and Santa Fe, New Mexico. “Of course, not every reportedly haunted hotel could make the list. Notably missing are Timberline Lodge, the historic Oregon hotel featured in Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining,” and Milwaukee’s Pfister Hotel, a property so spooky even professional athletes like Los Angeles Dodgers star Mookie Betts decline to stay in it when their teams come to town.”

• Haunted Houses
• Hotels
• Halloween
• Historic Preservation

Viewing the night sky up close and personal with the help of a travel telescope is a magical experience. After all, many of us live in locations with far too much light pollution to fully enjoy the benefits of a telescope at home. A travel telescope lets you take the show on the road, seeking out dark sky areas. It can also help you share the magic of cosmic exploration with others. However, shopping for telescopes of any type can be overwhelming due to a plethora of technical jargon and complicated specifications. We’ve researched for you and identified the best travel telescopes—like our best overall, the Celestron NexStar 127SLT—so you can bring your love for surveying space wherever you go. 

• Best overall: Celestron NexStar 127SLT
• Best handheld: Canon 15×50 IS Image Stabilized Binocular
• Best splurge: Celestron NexStar 8SE Telescope
• Best smart: Vaonis Vespera 2
• Best budget: Gskyer 70mm Telescope

Our selections for the best travel telescopes were based on extensive research and experience with astronomy experts. First and foremost, travel telescopes must be at least somewhat portable. As a result, we focused on telescopes that were relatively lightweight, compact, and durable. Optical quality was key, as even travel telescopes should provide a good viewing experience. Finally, we selected options with various apertures, focal lengths, magnification, and price points, making them suitable for various situations and users. 

Like other varieties of telescopes, travel telescopes come in various sizes, shapes, and formats. Of course, opting for a smaller, travel-friendly design means making some sacrifices. Luckily, though, there are still plenty of telescopes worth investing in for your travels. 

Celestron

Why it made the cut: Offering a surprising amount of magnification in a relatively lightweight package with computerized star tracking, the Celestron NexStar 127SLT packs a punch for a travel telescope.

Specs

• Weight: 18 pounds
• Dimensions: 15 x 38 x 54 inches
• Type: Maksutov-Cassegrain
• Mount: Altazimuth 
• Aperture: 127mm
• Focal length: 1500mm
• Eyepiece: 9mm and 25mm

Pros

• Lots of magnification
• Relatively lightweight
• Offers computerized star tracking

Cons

• Alignment can be tricky

One of the biggest downsides to travel telescopes is that they tend to be lower in magnification in order to keep a relatively compact size. The Celestron NexStar 127SLT, though, offers the best of both worlds. At 18 pounds, it’s not the lightest telescope available. But it features a 1500mm focal length and comes with 9mm and 25mm eyepieces. Those eyepieces result in 60x and 167x magnification, respectively. That level of magnification makes this quite the high-powered telescope compared to most travel telescopes. 

Beyond lots of magnification, it offers a bright 127mm aperture. You’ll easily be able to see details like Jupiter’s clouds, Saturn’s rings, and craters on the moon.  An added benefit for beginners is the GoTo technology and the database of more than 40,000 stars, galaxies, nebulae, and more. You can simply choose an object, and the telescope will find it and track it for you. 

Setup is easy, taking only minutes with the included steel tripod. The primary mirror provides color-corrected views for high-quality results, making for a superb overall experience. Despite all its features, its price is very reasonable. Finally, it comes with a two-year warranty, giving you more confidence in traveling with this highly capable telescope.  

Canon

Why it made the cut: The Canon 15×50 IS Image Stabilized Binocular provides the most portable form factor for stargazing with image stabilization to help while viewing handheld. 

Specs

• Weight: 2.6 pounds
• Dimensions: 11 x 8 x 0.1 inches
• Type: Porro prism binoculars
• Mount: N/A
• Aperture: 50mm
• Focal length: N/A
• Eyepiece: N/A
  

Pros

• Compact and portable
• Useful for terrestrial viewing as well
• Image stabilization makes for easier handheld viewing

Cons

• Narrow field of view

The Canon 15×50 IS Image Stabilized Binocular won’t give you the same view as a telescope, but if you want to stargaze in the backcountry, a pair of binoculars is the way to go. After all, you’ll never find a telescope that is as small or lightweight as these 2.6-pound binos. They will be much easier to pack into your backpack while still allowing room for all your other gear. 

The Canon 15×50 IS binoculars are some of the best you can buy, too. The 50mm object lens diameter lets in a lot of light for binos. That’s the same aperture as the Vaonis Vespera II telescope and not much less than our budget travel telescope. They offer 15x magnification, enough to get a good view of the moon and some planets. 

The image stabilization makes them even better, making it feasible to view the night sky while hand-holding the binoculars. For a better experience, you can also mount them to a monopod or tripod. The optics provide sharp, clear views with plenty of contrast, even in light-polluted areas. They are pricey but a great choice for stargazing on the go. 

Celestron

Why it made the cut: The Celestron NexStar 8SE Telescope offers a large aperture, though magnification for planet viewing, and a high-quality view, making it worthy of its higher price. 

Specs

• Weight: 32 pounds
• Dimensions: 32 x 34 x 52 inches
• Type: Schmidt-Cassegrain Catadioptric
• Mount: Computerized Altazimuth 
• Aperture: 8-inch (​203 mm​)
• Focal length: 2032mm
• Eyepiece: 25mm
  

Pros

• Good light-gathering abilities
• Fully automated go-to mount
• Beginner-friendly
• High-quality viewing experience

Cons

• Narrow field of view
• Fairly heavy for a travel telescope

While the Celestron NexStar 8SE Telescope is a bit pricey, it’s far from the most expensive telescope on the market. We love this telescope because it balances quality, features, and price quite nicely. It’s a worthy splurge for those getting a bit more serious about astronomy and wanting to jump up to something with more quality. 

The Nexstar 8SE offers a large, eight-inch aperture for lots of light gathering, making it ideal for scoping out deep celestial objects in deep space. The 2032mm focal length and 25mm eyepiece results in an 81x magnification, making it an excellent telescope to see planets. The optics are high-quality, resulting in sharp, high-contrast night sky views. 

Beginner stargazers will appreciate the motorized go-to mount with a database of over 40,000 celestial objects. It’s easy to set up with the SkyAlign feature, so you can get to peeping the heavens right away. At 32 pounds, the NexStar 8SE is on the heavy side for a portable telescope. But, provided you don’t need to fly or hike with it, that weight is worth it, and the compact size makes it easy to pack into your car. For all these reasons, this is one of the best telescopes for adults willing to spend a little more. 

Vaonis

Why it made the cut: Weighing just 11 pounds, the Vaonis Verpera II smart telescope offers a uniquely sleek and portable design that’s easy to bring wherever you go. 

Specs

• Weight: 11 pounds
• Dimensions: 21.7 x 13.2 x 6.2 inches
• Type: Not provided
• Mount: Computerized Altazimuth 
• Aperture: 50mm
• Focal length: 250mm
• Eyepiece: N/A

Pros

• Simple to use
• Attractive and compact design
• High-quality, detailed astrophotographs
• Automatically cuts through light pollution

Cons

• Pricey
• Included tripod is rather short

There’s a lot to like about the Vaonis Vespera II. It offers quite a unique design for a telescope, with sleek, space-worthy looks in a highly compact package. It weighs just 11 pounds, and the included tripod is also quite small, so it’s easy to bring even if you are hiking in somewhere. If you don’t want to go far, the Vespera II features built-in light pollution filtering, making it easier to see the heavens even living in a city. 

One of the main differences between the Vaonis Vespera II and traditional telescopes is that there is no scope. Instead of taking turns huddled over an eyepiece, you pair this smart telescope with a tablet or phone, making viewing celestial objects as a group easier. As a result, it’s also remarkably simple to set up and use, making it one of the best telescopes for beginners. You can control it entirely from your phone, selecting from 4,300 objects in the library to view, and the scope will automatically find and track that object. 

The Vespera II offers a high-quality, clear view of the sky. When you like something you see, you can take an astrophotograph with a tap on your device, producing sharp images of up to 24 megapixels. The main downside is that it doesn’t provide much magnification, so it won’t be great for viewing planets or detailed shots of the moon. But for anyone who wants incredible simplicity in a compact package, you can’t beat the Vaonis Vespera II. 

Gskyer

Why it made the cut: Lightweight and affordable, the Gskyer 70mm Telescope is easy to travel with and just as easy to use. 

Specs

• Weight: 5.64 pounds
• Dimensions: 24.8 x 4.92 x 8.46 inches
• Type: Refracting telescope
• Mount: Altazimuth
• Aperture: 70mm
• Focal length: 400mm
• Eyepiece: 10mm and 25mm
  

Pros

• Very lightweight
• Comes with a travel case
• Affordable
• Easy to use

Cons

• Limited magnification

The best budget telescope for travel also happens to be the most lightweight. Coming in at 5.64 pounds, this scope is easy to bring, no matter your mode of travel. Making things even easier is the included travel case, so you can keep all the separate components together and safe when you’re on the go. 

This Gskyer telescope offers a 70mm aperture and 400mm focal length. It comes with a 10mm and 25mm eyepiece, providing 40x and 16x magnification. Those magnification levels give you more flexibility to view a range of objects in the night sky, from closeups of the moon to viewing the entire moon at once. 

As a bonus, the Gysker 70mm Telescope has a smartphone adapter and a wireless camera remote so that you can take images through the scope with your phone. Of course, the budget price and lightweight design mean there are no smart or motorized features, so you’ll have to find objects in the sky on your own. And it won’t be powerful enough for epic planet views, either. But if you’re looking for a best value, it’s a good telescope and a great entry to stargazing on the go. 

Shopping for a telescope can be quite confusing. There is a lot of technical jargon associated with these optical devices, and deciphering what it all means can be overwhelming. To help you sort through all the noise, below are some of the most important factors to pay attention to when shopping for a travel telescope (or any telescope, for that matter). 

First and foremost, when shopping for a travel telescope, you’ll want to prioritize size and weight. Of course, just how small and light you need depends on the type of travel you’ll be doing. If you’re simply taking your car to a dark spot and don’t need to walk with the telescope very far, you could get away with a larger design. However, a compact, lightweight option is necessary if you want to fly with a telescope or even backpack with it. 

Broadly speaking, there are three different optical design types for consumer telescopes: refractor, reflector, and catadioptric. Each has advantages and disadvantages, depending on how it is used. 

Refractor telescopes use lenses to allow light to travel in a straight path from the front lens to the eyepiece at the back of the scope. Refractors are easy to use, reliable, and require minimal maintenance. However, they are very long if you want a larger aperture and get expensive, especially for high-quality refractors. 

Reflector telescopes use mirrors to reflect light, which allows for a much shorter design than reflector telescopes. They also cost less to make since mirrors are more affordable than quality glass, so more budget-friendly telescopes are reflector scopes. Dobsonian and Newtonian, two common types of telescopes, are both reflectors. 

Lastly, catadioptric telescopes use a combination of lenses and mirrors, resulting in a compact body. Portable telescopes are typically catadioptric as a result. 

It’s easy to focus entirely on the optical portion of the telescope when shopping, but the mount is just as important. The telescope mount controls how and where the telescope can move, impacting what you can actually do with it. There are three types to consider: Alt-azimuth, Dobsonian, and equatorial.

Alt-azimuth mounts are the most affordable option available. They allow for vertical and horizontal adjustments and can enable smooth tracking across the sky. Some even allow for automatic tracking to take the work out of the process. As a result, they are ideal for shorter astrophotography captures.

Dobsonian mounts use a lazy susan-like platform that’s able to rotate. These platforms need to be placed on sturdy surfaces, though, like tables or mounted platforms. Dobsonian mounts provide more stability than other mount types, provided you have a stable surface for it. If you know you’re traveling somewhere that offers a stable, level table in an ideal location for a telescope, then it’s a worthy mount for a travel telescope. But if you’re bringing your telescope off the beaten path or to all sorts of locations, it would be best to opt for a different mount. 

Lastly, equatorial mounts counteract the Earth’s rotation, making them best for long observations and astrophotography. With an equatorial mount, you can focus on a single celestial object and follow it—either manually or with an electric motor—across the sky while keeping it centered in the telescope. 

The telescope aperture is perhaps what most focus on when choosing a telescope. The aperture, also known as the primary lens, is measured by its diameter in either millimeters or inches. It indicates how much light the telescope lets in. A larger aperture will allow you to see dimmer objects, so it’s best to choose the largest lens you can afford. However, larger apertures also result in, naturally, larger telescopes. So you’ll also need to factor in how large of a telescope you want to travel with. 

You’ll also want to consider the type of objects you wish to view to decide which level of magnification is best. To see details like Saturn’s rings and Jupiter’s moons, a magnification of roughly 30 to 40x is necessary. For less detailed views, you can get away with less, however. 

The focal length of your eyepiece partly determines magnification. Many telescopes, especially those for beginners, will come with at least one eyepiece or sometimes multiple for greater versatility. To calculate the magnification of a specific eyepiece, simply divide the focal length of the optical tube by the eyepiece. 

Finally, some may appreciate extra telescope features that aid in using the scope. Many models today come with motorized mounts, including those with go-to functionality. Go-to mounts allow you to input a celestial object, and the telescope will automatically find and track it through the night sky. It takes much of the work out of stargazing, which some may appreciate and others may not. It also makes the telescope more expensive and heavier, so it’s essential to consider those tradeoffs. 

Simply put, travel scopes are, as the name implies, more travel-friendly than traditional telescopes. They are smaller, lighter, and often more durable than telescopes meant to stay put. Travel scopes typically don’t offer quite as good of a view of the heavens, though, so there is a tradeoff. 

Depending on how up close and personal you want to get with the planets, a magnification between 30x and 40x will be ideal. A magnification that strong will help you see Jupiter’s moons and Saturn’s rings. If you want to see even closer, such as the ice caps on Mars, you’ll need a magnification of around 100x, though. 

Yes, you can bring a telescope on a plane, provided it fits within the size limits of the airline you are flying. While you can put a telescope in checked baggage, that could be risky for your scope. After all, baggage handles aren’t always the most careful, and telescopes are typically delicate pieces of equipment. If it’s small enough, your best bet is to bring the travel telescope as a carry-on item in a protective case or bag.  

Professional astronomers typically use reflecting telescopes, specifically the Ritchey-Chrétien design. These telescopes offer large diameters and well-corrected fields of view, allowing for superb image quality and plenty of reach for deep-space observations. 

• Best overall: Celestron NexStar 127SLT
• Best handheld: Canon 15×50 IS Image Stabilized Binocular
• Best splurge: Celestron NexStar 8SE Telescope
• Best smart: Vaonis Vespera 2
• Best budget: Gskyer 70mm Telescope

For many of us, traveling is the only way to get a quality view of the night sky since light pollution is becoming more significant. While telescopes can get quite bulky and heavy, plenty of options are lightweight enough to travel with to those dark sky locations. All the options included here offer a quality viewing experience in a portable package so you can take your stargazing on the go for an even better experience. From the well-rounded Celestron NexStar 127SLT to the smart Vaonis Vespera 2 and the budget-friendly Gskyer 70mm Telescope, one of the travel telescopes here will help you get epic views of celestial objects no matter what your preferred mode of travel.

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