Free Republic

The following images form part of a new free outdoor exhibition, Britain from the Air, which opens at Victoria Gardens in Leeds today. Nicholas Crane, the television presenter, explains what makes the locations so special.

The video above shows the passage of 2015 ET across the sky on the night of March 11–12, tracked on camera from the Crni Vrh Observatory in Slovenia. It’s a time-lapse video (the time is noted along the bottom) so the effect is really neat to watch the asteroid “racing along” in front of the stars… but then, it was traveling a relative 12.4 km/second! The description on the video reads: The asteroid starts as tiny dot just below the centre of the right image and drifts gradually downwards. Due to a software glitch a correction which was meant to...

Video Link: Gigapixels of Andromeda

The jade artifact, which has cleft rectangles, incisions and a cone at its top, was discovered underwater in Veracruz, Mexico. Photo courtesy Professor Carl Wendt A mysterious corncob-shaped artifact, dating to somewhere between 900 B.C. and 400 B.C., has been discovered underwater at the site of Arroyo Pesquero in Veracruz, Mexico. Made of jadeite, a material that is harder than steel, the artifact has designs on it that are difficult to put into words. It contains rectangular shapes, engraved lines and a cone that looks like it is emerging from the top. It looks like a corncob in an abstract...

SOME PROFANITY The woman who was captured in a viral video last year attacking a drone photographer and calling him a “pervert” may have her charges dropped and record cleared.

This Is How Hollywood Has Been Fooling You All Along When it comes to contemporary Hollywood films, there's often more than meets the eye. We're not just talking about an elaborate use of special effects and CGI, its those smaller more finite details that are so often easy to ignore. On the set of any movie, along with the crew, actors and stunt doubles you'll also have 'extra's' - people like you and I paid to simply be a warm prop, background fodder if you will. A crowd milling about in a scene or a customer in a shop. Extra's...

It started with a bet between movie stars — and ended with both guys putting on their superhero costumes and visiting children’s hospitals. “Guardians of the Galaxy” star Chris Pratt and “Captain America” star Chris Evans set up a friendly wager on Twitter ahead of the 2015 Super Bowl: If Evans’ favorite team, the New England Patriots, won, Pratt would visit the Christopher’s Haven cancer charity in Boston dressed as Star-Lord, and if Pratt’s Seattle Seahawks won, Evans would visit Seattle Children’s Hospital dressed as Captain America.

Los Angeles has agreed to pay a $50,000 settlement to three photographers after they were detained by LA County Sheriffs while taking pictures in public places. As part of the settlement, the city will also teach its sheriff deputies that photography is not a crime.

This tweet from film director Amos Posner blew up across social mediayesterday. It's a photo taken at the What’s Up, Doc? The Animation Art of ChuckJones exhibit at the American Museum of Moving Image in New York: Jones' rules, first made public when he published them in his 1999 autobiography Chuck Amuck: The Life and Times of an Animated Cartoonist, areprobably pretty familiar to animation students and Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote fanatics. They are a fascinating testament to the need for clearly defined systems within a wacky creative process. Fun fact: In an interview for the book Hollywood...

Naughty, naughty cows broke into a woman’s home and pooed everywhere as she showered. Pat Costen, from Guernsey, came downstairs to find the two wandering around her house. They’re part of a conservation herd bred to protect grasslands. But she’d forgotten to lock her doors and the animals barged in with heavy bowels and no respect. Ms Costen said: ‘I was in the shower and when I came out I could smell something. I looked over the banister and there was large cow pat. They came in through the kitchen, along the corridor, round the snooker table and into the...

LONDON, March 3 A photographer in London captured a rare photo showing a small weasel appearing to ride on a woodpecker, but he said the mammal was actually attacking the bird. Martin Le-May of Essex said he and his wife, Ann, were walking Monday in Hornchurch Country Park when they came across the unusual sight. "I heard a distressed squawking noise and feared the worst," Le-May told the BBC. "I soon realized it was a woodpecker with some kind of small mammal on its back." Le-May said the woodpecker was in a struggle for its life with the unwanted passenger,...

The colourful bird, which displayed a “gloriously yellow/white colour interspersed with the flash of red head feathers”, eventually landed about 25 metres from the couple. It managed to escape the attack and fly out of sight as the weasel was distracted by the couple's presence.

Just because a character has been around forever doesn’t mean there aren’t new ways to reimagine it. Damon Hellandbrand, a talented artist based in the U.S., has created a series of images that portray the symbols of the zodiac as twisted, surreal creatures straight out of a nightmarish realm. Hellandbrand does much of his art with various digital illustration programs, but some are born as pencil drawings or watercolors – or “basically whatever medium I’m in the mood for.” He writes that he is inspired by artists like Ralph McQuarrie, Boris Vallejo and Frank Frazetta, and it’s easy to imagine...

Nelson Shanks, who painted a portrait of former President Bill Clinton in 2006, revealed in an interview published Sunday that there's more to the image than meets the eye, including a reference to the Monica Lewinsky scandal. "The reality is he's probably the most famous liar of all time," Shanks told the Philadelphia Daily News. "He and his administration did some very good things, of course, but I could never get this Monica thing completely out of my mind and it is subtly incorporated in the painting." Shanks explained that a shadow covering the Oval Office mantel in the painting...

On Wednesday evening Feb. 25, Justin Cowart, a geologist and amateur astronomer from Alto Pass, Illinois figured he’d have a crack at it. Cowart didn’t have much hope after hearing the news that the comet may very well have crumbled apart after the manner of that most famous of disintegrators, Comet ISON . ISON fragmented even before perihelion in late 2013, leaving behind an expanding cloud of exceedingly faint dust. Cowart set up a camera and tracking mount anyway and waited for clearing in the west after sunset. Comet D1 SOHO was located some 10° above the horizon near the...

Apple tells us that it’s launching a new global advertising campaign called “Shot on iPhone 6.” Starting this week, billboards in 70 cities in 24 countries around the world will feature photos captured by iPhone 6 owners. 77 iPhone photographers will be featured in the campaign after Apple selected their images as its favorites. The worldwide nature of this effort makes this possibly the largest mobile photo gallery ever put together, featuring the work of a group that spans a wide range of backgrounds, nationalities, ages, professions, cultures and photography experience. The photographs in the campaign were not commissioned...

Want a better understanding of how Photoshop’s sharpening filters work and how to best use them? Here’s a tutorial in which Photoshop expert Deke McClelland discusses using Photoshop’s features to bring out clearer details in your digital photographs. McClelland discusses all the sharpening filters found in the Sharpen menu in Photoshop (e.g. the one-click sharpening filters, Unsharp Mask, and Smart Sharpen), as well as the Sharpening panel found in Adobe Camera Raw.

A NASA astronaut on board the International Space Station tweeted a picture Saturday from orbit of a 'Vulcan' hand salute as a tribute to actor Leonard Nimoy, known best for his 'Star Trek' role as 'Mr. Spock.' Nimoy, who died Friday at 83, of end-stage chronic obstructive pulmonary disease at his Los Angeles home, with family at his side, said his son, Adam Nimoy. His final public statement, last Sunday on Twitter, was thoughtful and bittersweet. "A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory," he wrote, followed by his customary "LLAP"...

It might be slightly degrading, but being a pillow is better than the fear of constant attack. Okay dog, you can stay Via: kamil1308 I suppose there's no reason we can't get along Via: kamil1308 Even if you're slobbery and not too bright Via: kamil1308 You're still fluffy, like an oversized pillow Via: kamil1308 As long as you just lie down and don't move Via: kamil1308 Maybe we can actually be friends Via: kamil1308 Seriously, not a muscle Via: kamil1308 Don't think this works two ways though Via: kamil1308 I always get top bunk Via: kamil1308 Naps are dictated by...

Heads up: you can currently download a free copy of onOne Software’s Perfect Effects 9. It’s a $60 program that can be used as a Photoshop or Lightroom plugin or as a standalone tool. Inside are customizable filters and hundreds of presets that allow you to quickly apply custom looks to your photos.