A puffin swims underwater in search for fish off the coast of the Farne Islands in Northumberland, North East England in the last decade of July 2025. (Photo by Brian Matthews/Solent News & Photo Agency)

This image is NGC 6543 known as the Cat's Eye Nebula as it appears to the Chandra X-Ray Observatory and Hubble Telescope. A planetary nebula is a phase of stellar evolution that the sun should experience several billion years from now, when it expands to become a red giant and then sheds most of its outer layers, leaving behind a hot core that contracts to form a dense white dwarf star. This image was released October 10, 2012. (Photo by J. Kastner/NASA/CXC/RIT)

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)

People and sea-gulls bathe in the sea as the sun goes up with red colors in Stralsund close to the baltic sea island of Rügen, on early November 23, 2016. (Photo by Stefan Sauer/AFP Photo/DPA)

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

A horse grazes on railway tracks near the old train station on the the Northeast railroad (Ferrovia do Nordeste) in the city of Missao Velha, Ceara state, northeastern Brazil, October 25, 2016. (Photo by Ueslei Marcelino/Reuters)

NEPAL: A devotee is smeared with a vermillion powder while celebrating the “Sindoor Jatra” vermillion powder festival at Thimi, in Bhaktapur, Nepal, April 14, 2016. (Photo by Navesh Chitrakar/Reuters)

A street entertainer waits for tourists in Havana, Cuba on October 2009. (Photo by Desmond Boylan/Reuters)