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)

African women in their grandmothers' clothes: Joana Choumali’s portraits show modern African women swapping jeans for kente cloth – and diving into the dazzling cultural heritage of their families. (Photo by Joana Choumali/The Guardian)

Ultra Orthodox Jews look at the body of an alleged Palestinian assailant in Jerusalem Saturday, December 26, 2015. According to a police spokeswoman, policemen approached a man who drew their suspicions just outside the Old City for following a pair of Jewish worshippers. Then he pulled out a knife and tried to stab one of them, officers opened fire and killed the assailant. (Photo by Mahmoud Illean/AP Photo)

Scores of internally displaced Muslims are at the heart of the humanitarian crisis in Central African Republic, where violence between Christians and Muslims has threatened to spiral into genocide. Photo: An internally displaced woman carries her child in a camp for internally displaced people (IDPs), located at Bangui International Airport, April 10, 2014. (Photo by Goran Tomasevic/Reuters)

A man stands at a passenger train damaged in a collision with a freight train in Moscow region May 20, 2014. The passenger train on its way to Moldova collided with a freight train near Moscow on Tuesday, killing at least four people and injuring 15, a spokeswoman for Russia's Emergencies Ministry said. The reason for the collision, near the town of Naro-Fominsk 55 km (34 miles) southwest of Moscow, was not immediately clear. (Photo by Grigory Dukor/Reuters)

Omsin, a 25 year old femal green sea turtle, rests next to a tray of coins that were removed from her stomach after a surgical operation at the Faculty of Veterinary Science, Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, Thailand, March 6, 2017. (Photo by Athit Perawongmetha/Reuters)

A man dressed up as the devil jumps over babies lying on a mattress in the street during “El Colacho”, the “baby jumping festival” in the village of Castrillo de Murcia, near Burgos on June 18, 2017. Baby jumping (El Colacho) is a traditional Spanish practice dating back to 1620 that takes place annually to celebrate the Catholic feast of Corpus Christi. During the act – known as El Salto del Colacho (the devil's jump) or simply El Colacho – men dressed as the Devil jump over babies born in the last twelve months of the year who lie on mattresses in the street. (Photo by Cesar Manso/AFP Photo)

Britain's Princess Elizabeth clasps her hands in sympathy as Sergeant Jean Bayliss faints at her feet during an inspection of the guard of honour of the Women's Royal Army Corps at Shrewsbury Castle, Shropshire, on July 6, 1949. (Photo by AP Photo)