Competitors gather backstage as they prepare to take part in the All Ireland Irish Dancing Championships on November 2, 2016 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The championships take place at the Waterfront Hall over the course of six days with winners qualifying for the World Irish Dancing Finals which will take place in Dublin next year. (Photo by Charles McQuillan/Getty Images)

Three pugs peer out from a car window in Los Angeles, California. A wacky photographer has come up with an unusual pet project – snapping ecstatic dogs as they hang their heads out of car windows. Lara Jo Regan, 48, embarked on the odd task for her new 2014 calendar “Dogs In Cars”. The unusual shoot, which took place in Los Angeles, California, aimed to explore the joy experienced by pugs and huskies when a breeze hits their faces. (Photo by Lara Jo Regan/Barcroft Media)

Lady Gaga performs at Staples Center on August 11, 2010 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Jason Merritt/Getty Images)

Los Angeles city firefighters battle a massive fire at a seven-story downtown apartment complex under construction in Los Angeles, California December 8, 2014. Over 250 firefighters battle the early morning blaze which shutdown two major freeways the Los Angeles Fire Department and California Highway Patrol said. (Photo by Gene Blevins/Reuters)

Gaza authorities say two newborn lion cubs just unveiled by Hamas as prized additions in a zoo they run have died. Mohammad Abdel-Rahman, the acting manager of the Beit Lahiya zoo in northern Gaza, said Thursday the cubs died of an unspecified illness. He said the zoo's staff was unable to save them because they lacked experience in caring for newborn cubs. Photo: Two-day-old lion cubs Fajr and Sjel are fed at a zoo in the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Lahia, on November 19, 2013. (Photo by Mohammed Abed/AFP Photo)

Firefighters watch as an air tanker drops retardant while battling the Ferguson fire in the Stanislaus National Forest, near Yosemite National Park, California on July 21, 2018. A fire that claimed the life of one firefighter and injured two others near California's Yosemite national park has almost doubled in size in three days, authorities said Friday. (Photo by Noah Berger/AFP Photo)

Most people know Nikon as a purveyor of pro and consumer-grade digital cameras. But the company's expertise with optics bleeds over into related markets – it's one of the science community's major suppliers of microscopes. And each year the company asks the community to send it some of their favorite images of tiny objects. A panel of scientists and journalists have chosen the best of this past year's submissions, which Nikon has placed on its Small World site.

Photo: Honorable Mention. “Snow crystal, illuminated with colored lights (5x)”. (Photo by Dr. Kenneth Libbrecht, California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Department of Physics, Pasadena, California, USA)

An undercover police officer, who had been marching with anti-police demonstrators, aims his gun at protesters after some in the crowd attacked him and his partner in Oakland, California December 10, 2014. Police said more than 100 demonstrators marched in Berkeley, California, which has a history of social activism. Under cloudy skies, turnout was smaller than earlier in the week, when demonstrators in the area threw rocks at police and shut down a major freeway. (Photo by Noah Berger/Reuters)