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)

Attendees look at Volkswagen's BUDD-e, a long distance electric vehicle, displayed during a press event at CES 2016 at The Chelsea at The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas on January 5, 2016 in Las Vegas, Nevada. CES, the world's largest annual consumer technology trade show, runs from January 6-9 and is expected to feature 3,600 exhibitors showing off their latest products and services to more than 150,000 attendees. (Photo by David Becker/Getty Images)

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 three-year-old girl smokes a cigar during the Saint Simon celebrations in San Andres Itzapa, Guatemala, on October 28, 2019. Thousands believe that the saint helps people find work, solves family problems and cures illnesses. (Photo by Orlando Estrada/AFP Photo)

Third place: the rear leg, claw and respiratory trachea of a louse (Haematopinus suis). (Photo by Frank Reiser/Nassau Community College/Nikon Small World Photomicrography 2021)

The Milky Way rising above Durdle Door in Dorset, United Kingdom on Saturday night, March 18, 2023. The image consists of 19 two-minute exposures, ten of the foreground and nine of the sky which needed a motorised star tracker to ensure the Milky Way wasn't blurry. All the photos were merged together to reveal more detail than what the naked eye can see. (Photo by Nick Bull/Picture Exclusive)

Art graduate Katie Mills with her one of her “Kheeky” face flesh bottles that forms part of her “Bottoms Up” illustration design work during the media preview of the Edinburgh College of Art graduate show in Edinburgh on Friday, August 16, 2024. The exhibition features the work of more than 350 postgraduate students, and is part of the Edinburgh Art Festival, the UK's largest annual celebration of visual art. (Photo by Jane Barlow/PA Images via Getty Images)

A nurse bows to the life size statue of Pope Francis as her friend takes a photograph at the St.Louis hospital in Bangkok, Thailand, Tuesday, November 19, 2019. Pope Francis arrives in Thailand on Wednesday for the first visit here by the head of the Roman Catholic Church since St. John Paul II in 1984. (Photo by Manish Swarup/AP Photo)