People take pictures with cherry blossoms in a park on March 23, 2022 in Beijing, China. (Photo by Andrea Verdelli/Getty Images)

A stray cat walks in front of a ballot box at a polling station for Turkish citizens living abroad, as part of the second round of the Turkish presidential election, at the Turkish Embassy in Cairo, Egypt on May 22, 2023. (Photo by Amr Abdallah Dalsh/Reuters)

Cubans swim in a natural swimming pool off the coast of Havana on August 4, 2023. With the current hot summer, Havana residents have rushed to the dilapidated natural pools on the coast of their city, built by wealthy families in the first half of the last century. (Photo by Yamil Lage/AFP Photo)

Monkeys climb onto tourists during the annual Monkey Festival in Lopburi province, Thailand on November 26, 2023. (Photo by Chalinee Thirasupa/Reuters)

A protester throws a stone while clashing with Mozambican riot police in Maputo on November 27, 2024. Fresh anti-government protests erupted in Mozambique on November 27, 2024 after a police vehicle mowed down a woman at a demonstration in the capital for the opposition leader disputing October elections in a deadly weeks-long standoff AFP reporters at the scene said protestors hurled stones at security forces who fired bullets and tear gas as clashes broke out after the woman was struck while standing behind a large banner of opposition leader Venancio Mondlane. (Photo by Alfredo Zuniga/AFP Photo)

In this photo provided by Sugar Bowl Resort, snow covers the door of the marketing office at the Sugar Bowl Resort in Norden, Calif., on Monday, March 4, 2024. A powerful blizzard dumped more than 10 feet of snow on the California ski resort, where the marketing team had to dig a tunnel to get to their office door. The storm closed highways and most lifts at ski resorts over the weekend. (Photo by Jacob Banta/Sugar Bowl Resort via AP Photo)

People participate in a Labor Day parade on September 2, 2024 in Marlborough, Massachusetts. The festival is a new event this year added by Mayor J. Christian Dumais in an effort to bring the community together on Labor Day weekend. The festival included musical and artistic performances, children's games and activities, touch-a-truck, a beer garden, food trucks, vendors and more. (Photo by Zhu Ziyu/VCG via Getty Images)

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)