A model is prepared backstage at the LaQuan Smith show during Fashion Week on Monday, September 12, 2022, in New York. (Photo by Andres Kudacki/AP 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)

Wakodahatchee wetlands, Delray Beach, Florida, US. Equipped with sinewy necks and spear-like bills, great blue herons can lunge with fearsome speed to strike their aquatic prey. Adults will also employ rapid stabbing motions as one aspect of their complex courtship displays; they’re seemingly dangerous moves, but fitting to the intensity of mating season. (Photo by Melissa Rowell/Audubon Photography Awards)

(L-R) Canadian actor Patrick J. Adams as Michael Ross and American member of the British royal family and a former actress Meghan Markle as Rachel Zane at “Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner”, Episode 402 in April 2014. (Photo by Ian Watson/USA Network/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images)

A Turkey-backed Syrian fighter fires a rocket-propelled grenade as he takes part in a military exercise in the countryside of the northwestern city of Afrin, in rebel-held part of Aleppo province, on May 31, 2022. (Photo by Rami al Sayed/AFP Photo)

Dancers perform inside of transparent balls during the Botanical Night at Botanical Garden in Berlin, Germany, 20 July 2018. During the Botanical Night a 16 kilometre long path along the flower beds and several themed gardens are illuminated and guide to many attractions. (Photo by Hayoung Jeon/EPA/EFE)

Workers lay railway track in a tunnel of the Crossrail project in Stepney, east London, Britain, November 16, 2016. Crossrail, which is Europe's largest construction project, is a railway link which will connect outlying areas to the east and west of London with tunnels under the centre of the capital. (Photo by Stefan Wermuth/Reuters)

Raining on their New Year's Eve parade. Revellers in Leeds, United Kingdom get ready ready for the new year on December 31, 2022. (Photo by Nb press ltd)