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 Goodfellow's Tree Kangaroo joey with its mother at Sydney Zoo in Australia on January 22, 2021. The 28-week-old male joey, who is yet to be named, has only just begun to pop his head and shoulders out of his mum's pouch. (Photo by Taronga Zoo via Reuters)

A woman walks past a mural on a wall along a street in Singapore on February 17, 2021. (Photo by Roslan Rahman/AFP Photo)

Runners use headtorches as they compete in Centurion South Downs Way 100 ultramarathon, at Firle Bostal near Lewes, south of London on June 9, 2024. The Centurion South Downs Way 100, is an ultramarathon, predominantly off road course, covering a distance of 100 miles (160,9 kilometres) and that takes the competitors along the South Downs Way from Winchester in Hampshire to Eastbourne in East Sussex. (Photo by Ben Stansall/AFP Photo)

Professional wrestlers Helen Charlotte Campbell and Dark Sheik (R) compete during an evening of wrestling entertainment, presented by promoter “TNT Extreme Wrestling'” in Liverpool, northern England, on September 17, 2023. The event pitted UK-based wrestlers representing 'TNT Extreme Wrestling' against US wrestlers from “Game Changer Wrestling” and featured Helen Charlotte Campbell versus Dark Sheik, which is understood to be the first singles wrestling match between binary trans women in the UK. (Photo by Oli Scarff/AFP Photo)

“Double head vulture”. On the day of windy days during raptors migration some people in my country start to catch these tired raptors, so in this day we go to photograph some raptors and we saw these tow tired vultures, so we start to drag them away from the hunters until they reach a good hidden place, to make them safe until they start a new journey. Photo location: Kuwait. (Photo and caption by Mohd Khorshed/National Geographic Photo Contest)

A goose sits atop eggs in a flower bed on the Wisconsin Ave. bridge, Friday, April 19, 2013, feathers ruffled in the cold blowing wind and snowflakes. The goose is near to the statues dedicated to Gertie the duck who made international news when she built her nest next to the same bridge in 1945 and captured the attention of Milwaukee at the end of the war. A statue commemorating “Gertie the Duck” sits on the other side of the bridge. The goose has several eggs she is sitting on. (Photo by Mike De Sisti)