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)

A girl salutes to visitors before a show at the Mangyongdae Children's Palace in central Pyongyang, North Korea May 5, 2016. Pyongyang held a gala of song and dance performances by local school children on May 5 for visiting delegations of foreign journalists and tourists at the Mangyongdae Children's Palace. The event included orchestral, choir, and acrobatic performances, many of them with political undertones. The Seventh Worker's Party Congress commences on May 6, 2016. (Photo by Damir Sagolj/Reuters)

An internally displaced Afghan girl holds a child at a refugee camp in Kabul, Afghanistan May 31, 2016. (Photo by Mohammad Ismail/Reuters)

Swimmers in fancy dress take part in a Christmas Day dip at Exmouth, Devon, England, Saturday, December 25, 2021. (Photo by Ben Birchall/PA Wire via AP Photo)

Visitors wear traditional hanbok dress as they walk on the grounds of the Gyeongbokgung Palace after a snowfall in Seoul on January 17, 2022. (Photo by Anthony Wallace/AFP Photo)

American media personality and socialite Kourtney Kardashian was in the middle of shooting her Hulu show, The Kardashians in the first decade of February 2022. (Photo by Kourtney Kardashian/Instagram)

Japanese artist Sachi shows off her creation of a realistic 3D cat portrait, made by using felted wool, at her house in Sagamihara, Japan, January 21, 2022. (Photo by Akira Tomoshige/Reuters)

Icelandic stallions eat hay from a box at a stud farm in Wehrheim near Frankfurt, Germany, Wednesday, March 2, 2022. (Photo by Michael Probst/AP Photo)