Rachel Miner, 15, left, of Emmetsburg, Iowa, sits with Carlotta Haas, 15, a foreign exchange student from Duesseldorf, Germany, who had been living with Miner and her family but was called home, as they waited for her flight Wednesday, March 25, 2020, in at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport in Minneapolis. (Photo by Anthony Souffle/Star Tribune via AP Photo)

A giraffe quenches its thirst at a watering hole at Zimanga Private Game Reserve, South Africa in the second decade of December 2023. (Photo by Janette Hill/Animal News Agency)

Festival goers wear Australia day attire at Big Day Out 2012 at the Sydney Showground on January 26, 2012 in Sydney, Australia. (Photo by Mark Metcalfe/Getty Images)

A seller dressed as Snegurochka (The Snow Maiden) shows Christmas toys at the Christmas decorations set in the Moscow GUM State Department store in Moscow, Russia in Moscow, Russia, Monday, December 16, 2019. (Photo by Pavel Golovkin/AP Photo)

A row of abandoned oil tanks is filled with creepers on the riverside of Liyun River in Huai 'an, East China's Jiangsu Province, May 9, 2023. (Photo credit should read CFOTO/Future Publishing via 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)

Two sheep fight in a competition in Zhangjiakou, Hebei province, China on August 1, 2017. (Photo by Reuters/China Stringer Network)

In this June 20, 2015 photo, Niberta Galvez uses the bottom half of his shirt to collect coca leaves in Samugari, Peru. Coca farmers were among the locals who, in 1984, formed citizen militias to help the military beat back Shining Path rebels, reducing them to a small group of fewer than 500 who now are deeply involved in drug trafficking. (Photo by Rodrigo Abd/AP Photo)