Now celebrating its 40th year, Nikon Small World is widely regarded as the leading forum to recognize proficiency and photographic excellence of photography taken under the microscope. To select the winners, competition judges analyzed entries from all over the world covering subjects ranging from chemical compounds to up-close-and-personal looks at biological specimens. The 2014 winners will be revealed on October 30th. In 2014, the competition received over 1,200 entries from more than 79 countries around the world. (Photo by Dr. Igor Robert Siwanowicz/Nikon Small World 2014)

An image produced by the Hubble telescope of the perfectly “edge-on” galaxy, or NGC 4013, March 1, 2001. This new Hubble picture reveals, with great detail, huge clouds of dust and gas extending along, as well as far above, the galaxy's main disk. NGC 4013 is a spiral galaxy, similar to the Milky Way, lying some 55 million light-years from Earth in the direction of the constellation Ursa Major. Viewed face-on, it would look like a nearly circular pinwheel, but NGC 4013 happens to be seen edge-on from our vantage point. Even at 55 million light-years, the galaxy is larger than Hubble's field of view, and the image shows only a little more than half of the object, albeit with unprecedented detail. (Photo Courtesy of NASA/Newsmakers)

A British space-exploration company has revealed its aim to fly the public to the moon from 2015 – providing they have £100m for a ticket.

Photo: Jenn Sander from Red Robin PR, wearing a spacesuit once worn by US Astronaut Peggy Whitson, sits inside a re-entry capsule owned by Excalibur Almaz outside the Queen Elizabeth II Centre on June 19, 2012 in London, England. The company today announced their plan to fly people to the moon on what is the 40th anniversary year of the Apollo 17 moon landing. (Photo by Rosie Hallam)

It looks like an underwater tornado, but a diver was actually stuck in the middle of a huge school of fish. The fish swarmed around Mika Woyda in their thousands as she swam off the coast of Cabo Pulmo, Mexico. Her husband Caine Delacy snapped the breath-taking images of Mika in scenes he revealed he had never witnessed in 20 years of diving. Before entering the water the couple, who live in Boulder, Colorado, had some shots in mind but never imagined what they would capture. Here: photographer Caine Delacy with his wife Mika Woyda. (Photo by Caine Delacy/Mika Woyda/Caters News)

A view of the construction site of the Chateau de Guedelon near Treigny in the Burgundy region of France, September 13, 2016. Blacksmiths, stonemasons and quarry men are hard at work in a Burgundy forest building a 13th-century-style castle using the most basic tools and materials, replicating the methods used hundreds of years ago to better understand them. (Photo by Jacky Naegelen/Reuters)

Bob Woodward looks at the reconstruction he built of the Orpheus Pavement at Prinknash Abbey on March 31, 2010 in Gloucester, England. The replica mosiac, made of more than one-and-a-half million pieces of stone is described as one of the most significant archaeological projects of recent times. (Photo by Matt Cardy/Getty Images)

The Enigma coding machine used by the Germans in WWII on display at Bletchley Park National Code Centre, November 25, 2004 in Bletchley, England. (Photo by Ian Waldie/Getty Images)

“What created this unusual hole in Mars? The hole was discovered by chance on images of the dusty slopes of Mars' Pavonis Mons volcano taken by the HiRISE instrument aboard the robotic Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter currently circling Mars”. (Photo by NASA/JPL/University of Arizona)