Family members and relatives of passengers on board the Twin Otter aircraft operated by Tara Air, weep outside the airport in Pokhara on May 29, 2022. A passenger plane with 22 people on board went missing in Nepal on May 29, the operating airline and officials said, as poor weather hampered a search operation. (Photo by Prakash Mathema/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)

Taliban fighter, Mostashhed from Wardak province, looks on as he visits Kabul for the first time as hundreds of Taliban fighters take a day off to visit the amusement park at Kabul's Qargha reservoir, at the outskirts of Kabul, Afghanistan on October 8, 2021. (Photo by Jorge Silva/Reuters)

An exile Tibetan artisan waits to perform a traditional dance after an early morning prayer session to usher in the Year of the Water Hare in Dharamshala, India, Tuesday, February 21, 2023. (Photo by Ashwini Bhatia/AP Photo)

European bisons (also known as Wisent) at the Bison farm in Muczne, southeastern Poland, 30 December 2018. The Bison farm is a continuation of bison breeding in Bieszczady, which was started in 1963. Here visitors can admire the bison of Bialowieza-Caucasian line, also called the mountain race. The European Bison is the national animal of Poland. (Photo by Darek Delmanowicz/EPA/EFE)

A tourist poses for a souvenir snap in front of autumn foliage in Pitlochry, Scotland, Britain on September 28, 2018. (Photo by Russell Cheyne/Reuters)

A mason bee deposits its collected pollen in an elderberry stick near Hessen, Germany on March 27, 2020. The food supply is sufficient for the eleven-month development of the brood from the egg to the finished bee. Wild bees are active in March and April and die before their offspring hatch. (Photo by Arne Dedert/dpa)

The Aurora Borealis (Northern Lights) is seen over the sky near Inari in Lapland, Finland on February 14, 2019. (Photo by Alexander Kuznetsov/Reuters)