Robert Burck, better known as the “Naked Cowboy”, falls in the snow during a nor'easter storm in Manhattan, New York City on December 17, 2020. (Photo by Carlo Allegri/Reuters)

A rainstorm moves over the Atlantic Ocean after passing through Camden, Maine, at sunset, Tuesday, August 1, 2023. (Photo by Robert F. Bukaty/AP Photo)

Dr. Marius Kruger (C) and memeber of the Kruger National Park keeps the head of a rhino up during a white rhino relocation capture on October 17, 2014. The Kruger National Park relocated four rhinoceros from a high risk poaching area to a safer area as part of ongoing strategic rhinoceros management plan. (Photo by Stefan Heunis/AFP 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)

In this Wednesday, December 2, 2015 photo, Dr. Gal Kelmer, head of the department of large animals, unties a horse after its operation at the University's Koret School of Veterinary Medicine in Rishon Lezion, Israel. “Horses have an instinctive response of flight from danger”, Kelmer said. “The minute they wake up they start trying to stand and run, even if they don't have control of their limbs. So then they fall”. (Photo by Oded Balilty/AP Photo)

Senior hurricane forecaster Dr. Jack Beven studies computer models as he tracks Tropical Storm Arlene at the National Hurricane Center on June 29, 2011 in Miami, Florida. Arlene is the first named storm of the 2011 Atlantic hurricane season and is moving at 8 mph, packing sustained winds of 50 mph as it heads towards the east-central coast of Mexico. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Dr. Hannah Cobb from The University of Manchester looks at a viking sword during a viewing at CFA Archaeology of artefacts discovered from the first fully intact Viking boat burial site on October 18, 2011 in Edinburgh, Scotland. (Photo by Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)

A replica model of a Lamborghini Aventador LP 700-4 in Dubai, UAE. This is the world's most expensive model car, made from carbon fibre and covered in a thin layer of pure gold. The 1:8 scale replica Lamborghini Aventador LP 700-4, designed by German engineer Robert Gülpen, is available to buy for £200,000. But amazingly this model – currently on display at the Lamborghini showroom in Dubai – is just a prototype for a solid gold model, which will go up for auction in 2014 with a price tag of £4.6 million. (Photo by Robert Gulpen/Barcroft Media)