This photo provided by Jiji Press shows a Japan Airlines plane on fire on a runway of Tokyo's Haneda Airport on January 2, 2024. A Japan Airlines plane was in flames on the runway of Tokyo's Haneda Airport on January 2 after apparently colliding with a coast guard aircraft, television reports said. (Photo by JIJI Press/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)

A large Mantle or Desk Clock featuring a fossil ammonite at its center, carved from the South American wood Keolbra with radiating Walnut spines. The clock hangs on a round, Plexiglass back supported by a wood base (Bubinga). The clockworks is a quartz, high-torque movement that runs on a single AA battery.

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)

Couple getting intimate on couch. (Photo by Vincent Besnault/Getty Images)

Dinah Jane, from left, Normani Kordei, Lauren Jauregui, and Ally Brooke of Fifth Harmony perform a medley at the MTV Video Music Awards at The Forum on Sunday, August 27, 2017, in Inglewood, Calif. (Photo by Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP Photo)

English singer and songwriter Anne-Marie performs on stage during day two of Capital's Jingle Bell Ball with Seat at London's O2 Arena on December 8, 2019. (Photo by Isabel Infantes/PA Images via Getty Images)

Actress and model Rosie Huntington-Whiteley during an evening out and about in London, England on January 23, 2020. (Photo by Stephen Coke/Rex Features/Shutterstock)