Merry Cat-mas everybody.
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Are you wise beyond your years or young at heart?
Add some vegan variety to your menu!
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Samuel L. Jackson at the premiere of The Hateful Eight at ArcLight Cinemas Cinerama Dome on Dec. 7.
Jason Merritt / Getty Images
Samuel L. Jackson took a long, slow drag from his ornate black and gold vape pen, cocked his head to the side, and exhaled a cloud of smoke. Then, he snapped his head to the forefront, and braced himself, knowingly.
The veteran actor was already aware of where his conversation with BuzzFeed News was about to go next. But Jackson — the star of Quentin Tarantino’s upcoming movie The Hateful Eight and the director’s frequent collaborator — was ready for it.
“Once again, I’m sure there will be people who want to nitpick this whole nigger thing,” Jackson drawled inside a Beverly Hills hotel one recent Saturday afternoon. “But it ain’t like that ain’t the time.”
The Hateful Eight is another Tarantino period piece starring Jackson (see also Pulp Fiction, Inglorious Basterds, and Django Unchained). It’s set in Wyoming, a few years after the Civil War, and racial tensions are still high. Jackson plays Major Marquis Warren, a bounty hunter who fought in the war. “Occasionally somebody goes, ‘that black fellow,’ or ‘black major,’” Jackson said of the way his character is described onscreen. “But ‘black major’ sounds [as bad as] nigger.”
Jackson in The Hateful Eight.
The Weinstein Company
Marquis is the lone black guy for the most part in The Hateful Eight. The Oscar-nominated actor described him as “an interesting and colorful, and kind of smart and very dangerous guy. Kind of hard to find that combination.” Then, Jackson added with a chuckle, “The whole blue and gray of the war didn’t really matter that much to him. It was kind of like, I get to kill some white people? Really? OK! I’m good with that.”
True to Tarantino form, The Hateful Eight’s language is rich — in some scenes, the dialogue is almost as dangerous as the guns some of the cowboys are toting. (Marquis has a rather unforgettable flashback scene where words are in fact, the true assassin.) Tarantino is, however, often raked for his frequent use of the n-word; some viewers thought it was so excessive that they counted how many times — 110, to be exact — it was used in Django Unchained, his 2012 film about a slave-turned-bounty hunter (Jamie Foxx) who was determined to find his also enslaved wife, Broomhilda (Kerry Washington).
Jackson and Tarantino at The Hateful Eight press conference in Beverly Hills on Dec. 5.
Charley Gallay / Getty Images for The Weinstein Company
But Jackson surmises that even if The Hateful Eight’s characters didn’t use the slur as often as they do — and it is a great deal — it’d still sting as much as it does. But does the director push it too far when it comes to using the n-word? Jackson said no; Tarantino is just being authentic. “Quentin captures the language of who those people are and what their time is,” he said.
And Jackson would know. He was born in Washington D.C., grew up in a segregated Chattanooga, Tennessee, and attended Atlanta’s Morehouse College, a historically black college that also counts civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr. as an alum. Jackson, who even served as an usher in the famous leader’s funeral, understands the space and time Marquis comes from.
“I know from growing up in the South that white people talk about you like you ain’t in the room,” Jackson said. “When they say [the n-word], they’re just saying it so you know who they’re talking about because you can’t mistake who they’re talking about. Ain’t nobody else there!”
On the set of The Hateful Eight, the actors and crew existed in their own world — Tarantino didn’t allow cell phones — allowing the cast to engage with one another in a more intimate way. So, when it came to Jackson’s co-stars — Kurt Russell, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tim Roth, Bruce Dern, Demian Bichir, Michael Madsen, Walton Goggins, and Channing Tatum — spewing the n-word at him throughout the film’s three-plus-hour runtime, he wasn’t uncomfortable.
Russell and Jackson in The Hateful Eight.
The Weinstein Company
“I trust the actors I’m working with. I know all these guys very well. I know them personally, intimately,” Jackson said. “Their everyday lives aren’t peppered with that language and I know that. I know the efforts that they make, in terms of human rights affiliations, and things that they do in the world and how they feel about working-class people, and who the working-class people are. We don’t shy away from talking about politics when we’re sitting around being us.”
Jackson added that the downtime on set was a chance to get to know one another even better than they did before — he and Russell have golfed together and he’s worked with some of the other actors in other Tarantino movies. Jackson never had an urge to sit down with the other actors to talk explicitly about the loaded word; nor did any of the cast members think it necessary to talk overtly with Jackson about diving into that ugly time period.
“When we came out of that cold room, we sat together and drank coffee and we smoked cigarettes and ... we talked about the politics of the day, if there were any,” Jackson said, before taking another drag from his vape pen. “There’re different things that we know about each other just because we know each other, you know? We know who’s a Republican and who’s a Democrat and we argue about that. We’re like, Well, why do you feel that way? There are all kinds of things that go on between us that have nothing to do with those characters that are in that film. And the fact that they’re consummate professionals, and they can come in there and give 100% to the moment we are in, is what we’re interested in.”
Unless you’re going to shell out that eBay money.
Via reddit.com
Via funnyjunk.com
“Oh boy! That’s a baby bird in there.”
BuzzFeed Video / Via youtube.com
ALL THE FEELS.
BuzzFeed Video / Via youtube.com
*all kids were definitely on the nice list, because we checked it twice
youtube.com / Via youtube.com
New Economics For Women creates economic and educational opportunities for single parents, families and disinvested communities as a pathway for dreams to come true.
BuzzFeed Video / Via youtube.com
Their dream presents: digital tablets
BuzzFeed Video / Via youtube.com
“Sweetie…your brother is bringing his new girlfriend this Christmas. Can you sleep on the futon next to the dog?”
Sitting in your festive pyjamas eating mince pies and stalking people on Facebook.
Miramax
“Hey, what’s up? I’m Santa.”
Shall we say grace?
BuzzFeed Yellow / Via youtube.com
BuzzFeed Violet / Via youtube.com
It’s called “Dog A Day” and it’s exactly as delightful as it sounds.
Meghan Powell
Jessica Bernhardt Wenk
Nieces and nephews went nuts on Twitter with joyful holiday tales of uncles gone Trumping.
Getty Images
"Luckily, I have such a soft focus face that I don't think I will ever get to that point where someone comes up to me and is like, ‘I'm so sorry but I need you to Facetime with my girlfriend right now,'" Ike Barinholtz said in a recent interview with BuzzFeed News.
But he has seen plenty of that kind of fame firsthand. “I remember we were shooting Neighbors 2 and there were these three women — one was 58, one was 38, and one was 14 — and they were all screaming ‘Zac! Zac!’ over and over. And I was like, ‘That's three generations of women that want to fuck you,’” Barinholtz said with a laugh. “To have a life like Zac or Tina or Amy or Mindy is pretty intense.”
Zac is, of course, Zac Efron, Barinholtz’s co-star in Neighbors and its sequel, Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising; Tina and Amy are, of course, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, Barinholtz’s co-stars in Sisters; and Mindy is, of course, Mindy Kaling, Barinholtz’s boss and co-star on The Mindy Project.
But as any of his — as he put it — “goddamn famous” friends would tell him, that intense degree of global fame is something that chooses you, not the other way around. And given that 2015 marks his most high-profile role to date, things could be changing for Barinholtz.
Kaling and Barinholtz on The Mindy Project.
Universal Television
Since 2012, the Chicago native has slowly and steadily built a passionate fanbase through The Mindy Project where, in addition to writing and producing, Barinholtz plays Morgan Tookers, a sweet but startlingly incompetent ex-convict who works as a nurse at Mindy Lahiri’s OBGYN practice. In 2014, he co-starred with Efron and Seth Rogen in the fraternity hit comedy Neighbors as Jimmy Blevins, a man who refused to let go of his ex-wife. The roles played into a very familiar professional narrative for Barinholtz. “Everyone I've ever played has basically been a really dumb sexual deviant in some way,” he said as he reclined behind his desk in the Mindy office he shares with David Stassen, his longtime writing partner.
So, in 2014, the 38-year-old comedian focused on finding projects shooting during the show’s hiatus that could change that. Enter Sisters, the first time Tina Fey and Amy Poehler have co-headlined a film since 2008’s Baby Mama. They play siblings who return to their hometown of Orlando to clean out their shared childhood bedroom when their parents sell the house they grew up in — and to get their lives in order. It’s en route to the house when Kate (Fey) and Maura (Poehler) encounter James (Barinholtz), their parents' neighbor who instantly clicks with divorcee Maura.
The role ticked all of the boxes for Barinholtz: It offered him the opportunity to play someone new — “a sweetheart who is a nice guy who really gets to be, like, a normal dude”— and something new as well — the love interest. But this being Hollywood, playing the love interest meant he would be shirtless and therefore, had to lose some of the weight he’d packed on during Season 2 of The Mindy Project. “Morgan was really letting himself go that season,” Barinholtz said. “When I think of Morgan, he's almost indigent, you know what I mean? He's on the fringes of society so I never wear makeup for him and I really was getting big. I was 240 pounds. Just big. And the first scene where you see me, Amy and Tina are driving by and I'm wearing a tight shirt — and that only works if you're in good shape. They can't drive by and be like, ‘I bet that guy does good impressions!’ You know?”
Poehler and Barinholtz in Sisters.
K.c. Bailey
So he reduced his food intake and upped his workouts, resulting in a substantially slimmer, but not entirely unrealistic physique. The shirtless reveal is particularly refreshing, given the industry’s obsession with hyper-chiseled leading men. “It’s funny, I was watching a trailer for the show Shameless and William H. Macy is fucking jacked in it,” Barinholtz said. “I was like, ‘Doesn't he play an alcoholic who basically lives in a gutter? What is he, a trainer also?’ Unless it's a story point that you are completely shredded or you're Captain America, don't run away from a small coat of flab, especially in the winter months. It's cold and you need to store alcohol — that extra fat to keep you alive. It's healthy fat. It's good fat.”
While audiences are excited to see Fey and Poehler together again, Barinholtz was equally thrilled that Sisters reunited him with the two, whom he first met nearly 20 years ago when all three were up-and-coming performers in Chicago’s improv scene. “Tina was always just so funny,” he said. “I knew Amy a lot more because we're a little more similar in the sense that we're like, ‘Hey! Yo! Let's get drunk and have a smoke!’ But I always liked Tina and, even in 1996, was completely in awe of her and her comedy. It's just so sharp.”
The fact that Barinholtz is now playing the male lead in a major motion picture co-starring two comedians he’s loved for 20 years is kind of blowing his mind. “I still think I'm going to get cut out of the film,” he said half in jest of Sisters, which hits theaters on Dec. 18. “I still think there's a chance it opens and my wife says to me, ‘You had one line! What happened?’ It was a surreal experience. I still can't believe it happened.”
The cast of Suicide Squad.
Warner Bros.
The incredible professional opportunities continued for Barinholtz after he returned to film the third season of The Mindy Project when he auditioned for a role in Suicide Squad, DC Comics’s big budget super villain team-up co-starring Will Smith, Margot Robbie, Jared Leto, and Viola Davis. The movie, once again, afforded him the chance to try something new. “Going to Suicide Squad was a very different experience. I don't want to say it was agro-male because Margot Robbie is tougher than any of the guys, but it was just a very raucous set,” he said of the gritty, action-heavy blockbuster. “[Director] David Ayer is very dark. He chases that real darkness and says crazy things to you before a take to get your head spinning. He likes to psychologically get in there. He would tell us, ‘You know on Fury, right before a scene, I almost got Shia [LaBeouf] and [Jon] Bernthal into a fistfight.’ And it's like, I don't want to do that!! But he gets great performances out of actors and the movie is so big in scope. When I think of some of those sets, it's like, This is the size of Universal Studios. It was very, very, very different.”
Keeping the details of a super high-profile movie secret has also been a new experience for Barinholtz, who wasn’t even able to speak in depth about the character he plays. “I have David Ayer in my head being like, ‘I'm going to kill you if you say anything,’” he said before thinking for a solid minute. “I can say it's probably not who you think it is. I can say that he's definitely someone that people will not like, and he is someone who likes to really mess with people — likes to really hurt people and fuck them up.”
Off set, the cast of Suicide Squad bonded by getting matching tattoos and while Barinholtz didn’t get one (“My wife said, ‘If you come back with a tattoo from a movie you are in, I'll know what kind of man you are,’” he recalled), he did emerge from the experience with some new impressions to add to his repertoire. Robbie’s Australian accent was just one of the nearly dozen Barinholtz busted out during the course of our hourlong interview. They ranged from Arnold Schwarzenegger, Donald Trump, and Mindy Kaling to a used car salesman, a chain restaurant waiter, and an old-timey Hollywood agent.
Barinholtz's MadTV cast.
Fox
Those impressions, formed over years of doing improv, served Barinholtz well on MadTV, where he was a cast member from 2002 to 2007. While he, like most burgeoning comedians, dreamt of getting tapped by Lorne Michaels to star on Saturday Night Live, Fox’s late-night sketch series came calling first and, as a struggling 24-year-old comedian, he couldn’t say no.
“I was a busboy at Morton’s in Beverly Hills and I had been grinding it out in comedy for a long time,” Barinholtz said. “I was like, ‘Oh, I don't care about SNL, I need money right now! I'll do whatever you want.’ The first couple of years I was just in heaven. But I was always surprised that I succeeded there because MadTV has a definite formula where they want big, stock characters. That's why Alex Borstein, Michael McDonald, Nicole Sullivan, Keegan Michael-Key were so great because they have that rotating cast of characters in their head. I've never been able to do that. I'm not one of these guys who transforms; I'm always playing an incarnation of myself. So I was always shocked when I would be asked to come back every year because I didn't think I was doing that well. … And then you start getting restless.”
After Season 12, Barinholtz left the show ready to join the ranks of comedians in Hollywood who transitioned from sketch comedies to film and television. There was only one problem: “Hollywood said no,” he said with a laugh. Going from a steady paycheck for five years to a series of slammed doors was a harsh reality for Barinholtz and the start of what he referred to as “my dark period.”
“Going back to being a broke writer-actor in L.A. is very humbling, especially when your girlfriend, now my wife, moved out here for you,” he said. “That was a humdinger. During that time, I took whatever I could get.” What he could get was a series of spoof films written and directed by Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, like 2008’s Meet the Spartans and Disaster Movie and 2010’s Vampire’s Suck. “Getting those movies allowed me to survive and I'm so grateful and thankful to those guys for letting me come and imitate Dane Cook in Vampires Suck or whatever,” Barinholtz said.
Kaling and Barinholtz at the Television Critics Association summer press tour in August 2015.
Frederick M. Brown / Getty Images
And the bright side of his “dark period” was that it afforded him the time to focus on writing, something he and David Stassen, whom he’s known since they met as 8-year-olds at sports camp in Chicago, had done together since high school. “There's five minutes a year where I'm like, ‘Fuck you! You're wrong,’ but for the other 10 million minutes, it's pretty great to have someone you have a shorthand with and someone who almost, annoyingly, can finish my thoughts,” Barinholtz said of Stassen. “It’s nice to feel like you have another brain.”
Having a lifelong partner like Stassen is also what allows Barinholtz to feel comfortable taking time away from his first priority, writing and producing The Mindy Project, to expand his career as an actor. And while he has his ear to the ground for his next hiatus project — possibly his first-ever true lead role — Barinholtz is currently due back in The Mindy Project writers room, which suits him perfectly fine because he can very easily recall the years when a job — and career — of this caliber felt infuriatingly unattainable.
“Every time I drive past La Cienega and Third and see that loading dock outside Morton’s, I instantly go back there,” Barinholtz said, with a rare wistfulness in his voice. “I remember standing outside with the other waiters, smoking cigarettes, thinking, I've gotta do something. I want to have a body of work that, when I die, I can look back on and be proud of. Then, to have a few years where the industry tells you that not only is your dream not going to happen, but you might have to leave? It was so hard.
“So yeah, I definitely am so grateful for everything I have and to be surrounded by people, not just at this show, but in my career, who think I'm funny. Because when you get a big laugh, that's the greatest feeling. To me, laughs are definitely like a drug ... and if [people are] laughing with you, you're doing something right.”
None of these 2015 movies were among the top 100 grossing movies at the domestic box office — but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t give them a chance. And don’t miss our list of under-the-radar films from the first half of this year.
Film Presence
Like a forgotten episode of Black Mirror, Jennifer Phang's thinky sci-fi drama is set in a near future in which everything's a little sleeker and more competitive, and everyone's increasingly aware of and anxious about falling on the right side of the growing gap between haves and have nots. Jacqueline Kim, who wrote the script with Phang, plays Gwen, a single mom who's been working as the face of the Center for Advanced Health and Living, a euphemistic name for a place that offers cosmetic enhancement and rejuvenation treatments. When the company decides to pass her over for someone younger and more accessible (and, it's implied, less Asian), Gwen agrees to participate in a new, experimental treatment in order to keep her job and make sure her daughter can go to the right schools. Advantageous feels like it's set right on the cusp of a society turning from an exaggerated version of our own to full-on dystopian, and that delicacy is what makes it terrifying. What makes it sad is Gwen's desperate longing to do better for her daughter than she was able to do for herself, even if it means making an incredible sacrifice. —Alison Willmore
Where to see it: Advantageous is streaming on Netflix. It's also available for digital rental and purchase.
ABC Photo Archives / Magnolia Pictures
In 1968, desperate for ratings and with little to lose, third-place ABC News decided to do something unusual for its coverage of the Republican and Democratic National Conventions: Give renown public intellectuals William F. Buckley Jr. (a firebrand conservative) and Gore Vidal (a roguish liberal) airtime every night in which to debate the issues of the day. The result was a deliciously vicious and at times explosive series of verbal altercations, and this documentary about them, from directors Morgan Neville (20 Feet From Stardom) and Robert Gordon (Johnny Cash's America), is just as delightful — and insightful. The debates haunted both men far after they aired, and Neville and Gordon outline with great verve how they represented both the beginning of political discourse as televised bloodsport, and the last time men of such unveiled snobbery and unmistakable erudition were allowed to be on television. —Adam B. Vary
Where to see it: Best of Enemies is streaming on Netflix, and is available for digital rental.
What a morning for this three!
*turns bright red, runs away*
Presents are the stuffs of my nightmares.
FOX
Am I smiling enough? Too much? Am I grimacing? Smi-macing maybe?
MTV News
G-Day = the day on which a combat attack is to be initiated against THE GIFTS.
NBC
The travel arm of the National Geographic Society received more than 17,000 entries, with one image making it to the top spot: a spectacular photo of divers suspended in the water as they swim near a humpback whale. It was shot by Anuar Patjane Floriuk, from Mexico, near Roca Partida, an island off the west coast of Mexico.
Titled "Whale Whisperer", Floriuk told National Geographic: “The photo wasn’t planned … I was taking photos near the head of the whale, and all of a sudden she began to swim toward the rest of the diving team. The divers gave the whale and her calf space, and I just clicked at the moment when the flow and composition seemed right.”
Anuar Patjane Floriuk / National Geographic Traveler Photo Contest / Via natgeo.com
"Three gravel workmen are looking through the window glass at their work place." – Ahmed Al Toqi
Ahmed Al Toqi / National Geographic Traveler Photo Contest / Via natgeo.com
"Camel Ardah, as it is called in Oman, is one of the traditional styles of camel racing between two camels controlled by expert men. The faster camel is the loser, so they must be running at the same speed level in the same track." – Ahmed Al Toqi
Ahmed Al Toqi / National Geographic Traveler Photo Contest / Via natgeo.com
"Kushti is the traditional form of Indian wrestling. Wearing only a well-adjusted loincloth (langot), wrestlers (Pelwhans) enter a pit made of clay, often mixed with salt, lemon, and ghee (clarified butter). At the end of a workout, wrestlers rest against the walls of the arena covering their heads and bodies with earth to soak up any perspiration and avoid catching cold. This relaxation ceremony is completed with massages to soothe tired muscles and demonstrate mutual respect." – Alain Schroeder
Alain Schroeder / National Geographic Traveler Photo Contest / Via natgeo.com
White frost over Pestera village in Romania.
Eduard Gutescu / National Geographic Traveler Photo Contest / Via natgeo.com
"The night before this photo, we tried all day to get a good picture of the endangered white rhino ... In the morning I woke up to all three rhinos grazing in front of me." – Stefane Berube
Stefane Berube / National Geographic Traveler Photo Contest / Via natgeo.com
"Traditional haymaking in Poland. Many people continue to use the scythe and pitchfork to sort the hay." – Bartłomiej Jurecki
Bartłomiej Jurecki / National Geographic Traveler Photo Contest / Via natgeo.com
"Two boys are trying to catch a duck at the stream of the waterfall." – Sarah Wouters
Sarah Wouters / National Geographic Traveler Photo Contest / Via natgeo.com
"A sauna at 2,800 metres high, in the heart of Dolomites, Monte Lagazuoi, Cortina, eastern Italian Alps." – Stefano Zardini
Stefano Zardini / National Geographic Traveler Photo Contest / Via natgeo.com
"The night before returning to Windhoek, we spent several hours at Deadveli [in Namibia]. The moon was bright enough to illuminate the sand dunes in the distance, but the skies were still dark enough to clearly see the milky way and magellanic clouds. Deadveli means 'dead marsh'. The camelthorn trees are believed to be about 900 years old, but have not decomposed because the environment is so dry." – Beth McCarley
Beth McCarley / National Geographic Traveler Photo Contest / Via natgeo.com
Now in its seventh year, the Royal Observatory Greenwich astronomy photo contest received a record number of entries: over 2,700 from 60 countries, across a range of categories.
The overall winner was French photographer Luc Jamet with his picture of the drama of the total solar eclipse of 20 March 2015, 100 metres above the wintry valley of Sassendalen in the Norwegian territory of Svalbard.
"The total solar eclipse of 20 March 2015 seen from Svalbard – one of only two habitable locations that were able to witness totality – just 16 seconds after it began. The image shows totality about 100 metres above the large valley of Sassendalen situated on the only permanently inhabited island of the Norwegian archipelago. Venus can also be seen in the photograph, as a bright spot in the upper left of the image." – Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2015
Luc Jamet / Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2015
"Taken on 7 July 2014 from Seaburn Beach, Sunderland, in the north of England. The photographer had seen nightly displays of noctilucent clouds for up to seven days prior to taking this shot ... Noctilucent clouds are the highest clouds in the Earth’s atmosphere and form above 200,000 feet. Thought to be formed of ice crystals, the clouds occasionally become visible at twilight when the sun is below the horizon and illuminates them. They are usually bluish or silver in colour, but sometimes appear orangey-red or red when they are on the horizon, as seen in this photograph." – Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2015
Matt Robinson / Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2015
"Positioned 3,000 metres above sea level for a night of stargazing, the photographer captured the Milky Way, boasting star clouds and nebulae, expanding over towering peaks in the Hautes-Pyrénées." – Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2015
Martin Campbell / Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2015
"Taken in Abisko National Park in Lapland. The photographer had all but given up on seeing the aurora after spending many hours atop a mountain waiting to catch a glimpse of them. As he stumbled down the hill he saw the green reflection of the aurora in the snow and captured this breathtaking shot of the piercing blue light show coursing through the night sky." – Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2015
Jamen Percy / Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2015
"A little after midnight, when the nights in central Norway begin to get really bright, the photographer captured a phenomenal vision of greens and purples dancing across the sky above him, contrasting with the tangerine glow of the sunset towards the bottom of the image." – Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2015
Kolbein Svensson / Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2015
"The vivid green aurora swirls across the night sky, countering the stillness of the Lomaas River and the snowy trees aligned on its banks. The photographer went the extra mile to achieve the beautiful shot, immersing himself in the river for over two hours in waters of a temperature of -15 degrees [celsius]. Upon exiting the river his wet waders froze almost immediately causing him to ‘waggle’ over to his car like a sumo wrestler and inspiring the name for this photograph." – Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2015
Arild Heitmann / Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2015
"Lying approximately 3 million light years away, M33 – often named the Triangulum Galaxy after the constellation it can be found in – is the third-largest member of the Local Group of galaxies behind the Andromeda Galaxy and our very own galaxy, the Milky Way. It is one of the most distant permanent objects in the night sky that can be seen with the naked eye in optimum conditions." – Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2015
Michael Van Doorn / Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2015
"A massive, searing hot loop of plasma radiates from the edge of our local star – the sun – in a phenomenon known as a solar prominence. Emanating from the outer of the sun shell from which light is emitted, also known as its photosphere; the photographer has captured this prominence extending to the corona, which is the aura of the plasma surrounding it, as it detaches from the gaseous body. During the process of detachment the prominence reached a length of over 700,000 kilometres – a length roughly equal to the radius of the sun itself." – Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2015
Paolo Porcellana / Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2015
"An arresting image of the total solar eclipse of 20 March 2015, taken just after totality occurs and depicting the moments after the sun begun to emerge from behind the moon following approximately two minutes of coverage. Photographed from the Norwegian territory of Svalbard, which was one of only two habitable locations to experience totality." – Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2015
David Wrangborg / Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2015
"Campers shelter from the wind next to old stone cottages looking up to Sunset Peak, the third-highest mountain in Hong Kong, standing at 869 metres tall. Above the mountain and at an even further distance from the campers, the stars appear to flash across the night sky leaving trails in their wake but are in fact portraying the movement of the Earth on its axis." – Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2015
Chap Him Wong / Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2015
"An engrossed stargazer stands in the spotlight of a brilliant display of the Aurora Borealis in Norway, seemingly about to be beamed up into space." – Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2015
Tommy Eliassen / Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2015
"A coincidental alignment shows the Comet C/2014 E2 Jacques travelling just below the famed Heart Nebula in the constellation of Cassiopeia." – Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2015
Lefteris Velissaratos / Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2015
"The globular cluster Omega Centauri is a dense orb of approximately 10 million stars, many of which are redder, cooler, and even older than our sun. The cluster can be found 15,800 light years away from Earth and has a diameter of 150 light years." – Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2015
Ignacio Diaz Bobillo / Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2015
"A phenomenal view of the huge expanse of the Orion complex, made up of 34 panes comprising over 400 hours of exposure. The red emission nebula Barnard’s Loop stretches – approximately 300 lightyears in length – across the vastness captured here, arcing around the famed Orion and Horsehead nebulae." – Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2015
Tom O'donoghue And Olly Penrice / Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2015
It’s what your inbox wants.
Kevin McDermott / Charlie by Matthew Zink / Via charliebymz.tumblr.com
