Visitors walk through a tulip display in Chaya Mountain, Suiping County in Zhumadian, Henan Province of China on March 31, 2016. There are more than ten varieties of tulips here. (Photo by VCG/VCG via Getty Images)

Andrew Parkinson, animal behaviour category winner: Crepuscular Contentment, Derbyshire. “In 15 years of working with badgers I’ve never seen a badger sit out in the open to have a scratch. I was sat concealed behind a tree and downwind so it was especially nice that the badger had his back to me, demonstrating just how inconspicuous and inconsequential my presence was”. (Photo by Andrew Parkinson/British Wildlife Photography Awards 2017)

Karis, an eleven week old lion cub, plays in fallen leaves brushed up by keepers in her enclosure at Blair Drummond Safari Park, near Stirling, Scotland, on November 20, 2013. (Photo by Andrew Milligan/PA Wire)

A police officer stands guard out of a venue where farmer leaders meet with government representatives in New Delhi, India, December 5, 2020. (Photo by Adnan Abidi/Reuters)

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)

Pic shows two males tigers sparring for dominance over a female in the Tadoba Andhari Tiger Reserve in Chandrapur district of Maharashtra state in India on Monday, January 16, 2023. The spectacular images of the big cats were taken by Narayan Malu who was just 150 yards from the action. (Photo by Narayan Malu/Magnus News)

14th Place. Leaf roller weevil (Byctiscus betulae) lateral view. Image Stacking, Reflected Light 3.7X (objective lens magnification). (Photo by Özgür Kerem Bulur/Nikon Small World Photomicrography 2020)