A walrus takes centre stage after barging another out of the way to be in a photograph in Svalbard, between mainland Norway and the North Pole in January 2025. (Photo by Olav Thokle/Syndicated Photos/Solent News)

Seljalandsfoss waterfall, located in Iceland. Seljalandsfoss is one of the most famous waterfalls of Iceland. This waterfall of the river Seljalandsá drops 60 metres (200 ft) over the cliffs of the former coastline. It's possible to go behind the waterfall. (Photo by HotSpot Media)

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)

Polar frame, by Dmitry Kokh, Russia. When Kokh’s boat approached the small island of Kolyuchin in the Russian High Arctic, which had been abandoned by humans since 1992, he was surprised to spot movement in one of the houses. Binoculars revealed polar bears – more than 20 in total – exploring the ghost town. Dmitry used a low-noise drone to document them. (Photo by Dmitry Kokh/Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2022)

Soldiers try to attach the balloon to their car, June 1944. (Photo by Jared Enos/Mediadrumworld.com)

The Wildscreen festival is the world’s biggest celebration of screen-based natural history storytelling which takes place every two years in Bristol. Here: “Walrus in Midnight Sun”. Walrus feed mostly on bivalves in productive, shallow and often sandy habitats in the Arctic. This individual, though, arrived on a beach outside Tromsø, northern Norway, and found comfort on a stranded dead sperm whale. After two weeks he approached Audun, and only half a metre away he stretched his tusk forward and touched his hand gently. “This was one of the most memorable moments of my life”, Rikardsen says. He named the 500kg male Buddy. After two months, the dead whale was decomposed and Buddy suddenly disappeared. (Photo by Audun Rikardsen/Wildscreen 2016)

Wild elephants, including a tusker (C), rummage through garbage dumped at an open ground in the village of Digampathana in north- central Sri Lanka on August 19, 2017. Sri Lanka has banned the dumping of garbage at open fields and near wildlife reserves, but the practice continues. (Photo by Lakruwan Wanniarachchi/AFP Photo)

This undated handout photograph released by Stony Brook University/ Louisiana State University on March 2, 2018, shows an Adélie penguin looking at a drone at breeding colony on Heroina Island, Danger Islands, Antarctica. A thriving “hotspot” of some 1.5 million Adelie penguins has been discovered on the remote Danger Islands in the east Antarctic, surprised scientists announced on March 2, 2018. (Photo by Rachael Herman/AFP Photo/Louisiana State University AND Stony Brook University)