A man reacts as he tries to extinguish a burning Christmas tree at Festival Walk mall in Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong, November 12, 2019. Anti-government protesters smashed windows and set fires in the mall on Tuesday, including to a big Christmas tree. (Photo by Thomas Peter/Reuters)

Russian artist Maria Gazanova (L) works on her "The Alive Painting" art work during the Art Krasnoyarsk annual festival in Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk, Russia November 4, 2015. (Photo by Ilya Naymushin/Reuters)

A woman jumps as a friend (not seen) takes a photo in front of a large drawing of Pope Francis depicting him as a superhero near the Vatican January 29, 2014. The Argentinian Pope is shown taking off into air with his right fist clenched in a classic Superman style. (Photo by Alessandro Bianchi/Reuters)

The Blue Man Group performs on stage during a media preview ahead of their show in Singapore on March 31, 2016. Blue Man Group was started by three friends in New York in 1991 as a way to celebrate the human spirit through music, science, art and theater. (Photo by Roslan Rahman/AFP Photo)

Russian soldiers rehearse ahead of a forthcoming parade on Red Square in Moscow on November 5, 2017 The event will take place on November 7, marking the 76 th anniversary of a 1941 parade, when Red Army soldiers marched past the Kremlin walls towards the front line to fight Nazi Germany troops during World War Two. (Photo by Mladen Antonov/AFP Photo)

New York Police Department tactical police officers stand guard near the New York Stock Exchange on September 9, 2011 in New York City. Officials are stepping up security in New York and Washington D.C. a day after U.S. officials received a credible but unconfirmed terror threat to utilize car bombs on bridges or tunnels in New York or Washington. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

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)

Performers debut in the first decade of May 2024 the new Cirque du Soleil Spirit production at the Macallan Estate in Speyside, Scotland, created specially to commemorate the whisky brand’s 200th anniversary. (Photo by Cirque du Soleil 2024)