(L-R) Ryan Regez of Switzerland, Tyler Wallasch of USA, Sandro Siebenhofer of Austria and Ferdinand Dorsch of Germany during the men's quarterfinal heat 4 during the men's Ski Cross final at the FIS Freestyle Ski World Cup event in Idre, Sweden 23 January 2021. (Photo by Pontus Lundahl/EPA/EFE)

France's Alice Finot celebrates next to the mascot winning silver in the Women's 3000m final at the 2021 European Athletics Indoor Championships in Torun on March 5, 2021. (Photo by Aleksandra Szmigiel/Reuters)

Los Angeles Chargers wide receiver Keenan Allen runs onto the field before an NFL football game against the Pittsburgh Steelers, Sunday, November 21, 2021, in Inglewood, Calif. (Photo by Ashley Landis/AP Photo)

A cheerleader for the Virginia Cavaliers men’s basketball team on court during a timeout against the Texas A&M Aggies at John Paul Jones Arena in Virginia, US on November 29, 2023. (Photo by Geoff Burke/USA Today Sports)

Spectators dance in the infield before the 150th running of the Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs in Louisville, KY on Saturday, May 04, 2024. (Photo by Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

Shortlisted: Pooyan Shadpoor, Houcheraghi. While walking along the shore of Larak, Iran – an island in the Persian Gulf – Shadpoor came across this luminous scene. The “magical lights of (the) plankton ... enchanted me so that I snapped the shot”, he writes. (Photo by Pooyan Shadpoor/2016 EPOTY)

A boat commutes across the Mekong river in Phnom Penh on August 8, 2014. The Mekong is the world's twelth longest river running from the Tibetan Plateau through China's Yunnan province, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. (Photo by Tang Chhin Sothy/AFP Photo)

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)