A soldier supporting anti-government opposition groups carries a rocket-propelled grenade launcher on a street in the Fagah area of Mogadishu, Somalia Sunday, April 25, 2021. Gunfire was exchanged Sunday between government forces loyal to President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, who signed into law on April 14 a two year extension of his mandate and that of his government, and other sections of the military opposed to the move and sympathetic to former presidents Hassan Sheikh Mohamud and Sharif Sheikh Ahmed. (Photo by Farah Abdi Warsameh/AP Photo)

This artist's scoreboard displays a fictional game between Mars and Earth, with Mars in the lead. It refers to the success rate of sending missions to Mars, both as orbiters and landers. Of the previous 39 missions targeted for Mars from around the world, 15 have been successes and 24 failures. For baseball fans, that's a batting average of .385. The United States has had 13 successes out of 18 attempts, or a “batting average” of .722. NASA's Curiosity rover, set to land on the Red Planet the evening of Aug. 5, 2012 PDT (morning of Aug. 6 EDT), will mark the United States' 19th attempt to tackle the challenge of Mars, and the world's 40th attempt. (Image by NASA/JPL-Caltech)

A vendor drinks water as she waits for customers at a roadside flower market in Ahmedabad, India, February 8, 2017. (Photo by Amit Dave/Reuters)

College students take shelter at a traffic point as a man paddles his rickshaw through a flooded road during heavy rain in Guwahati, India, June 13, 2017. (Photo by Anuwar Hazarika/Reuters)

Belgium supporters pose before the World Cup quarterfinal soccer match between Argentina and Belgium at the Estadio Nacional in Brasilia, Brazil, Saturday, July 5, 2014. (Photo by Victor R. Caivano/AP Photo)

Pawel Karpinski and Nadine Kinczel of Poland dance as they compete during IPC Wheelchair Dance Sport European Championships in Lomianki near Warsaw, November 9, 2014. (Photo by Kacper Pempel/Reuters)

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)