This plane looks like it's bound for the moon as it shoots across the sky. Photographer Sebastien Lebrigand was impressed he could even see the lights on the jet's wings in this stunning silhouette. (Photo by Sebastien Lebrigand/Solent News)

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)

Soldiers, including two recruits who have brought some chickens, at Victoria prepare to board the train for the battle front. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

A robot Ecce by the Robot studio is pictured at the world's largest industrial technology fair, the Hannover Messe, in Hanover April 13, 2015. (Photo by Wolfgang Rattay/Reuters)

Cars drive under a rainbow near Bad Langensalza, Germany, Wednesday, November 2, 2016. (Photo by Jens Meyer/AP Photo)

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

A Flemish demonstrator, one of thousands who gathered for a march through Brussels to protest against what the Flemings call their subjucation by the French-speaking Walloons, draws back as he is jeered by a crowd of Walloons on the pavement in a Brussels Street, on October 14, 1962. The Flemish demonstrators clashed with Walloon counter demonstrators as riot police sought to maintain order. The Flemings claim that although they form 60% of the population in Belgium, they are inadequately represented in the government, and they say, the Walloons get most of the top jobs in the armed forces and the diplomatic service. (Photo by AP Photo)

A handout phptopgraph made avaiable by NASA showing Russian support personnel roll the Soyuz TMA-19M spacecraft after it landed with with with Expedition 47 crew members Tim Kopra of NASA, Tim Peake of the European Space Agency, and Yuri Malenchenko of Roscosmos near the town of Zhezkazgan, Kazakhstan 18 June 2016. Kopra, Peake, and Malenchenko are returning after six months in space where they served as members of the Expedition 46 and 47 crews onboard the International Space Station. (Photo by Bill Ingalls/EPA/NASA)