The front wheels of a tractor lift off the ground as the driver moves a heavy trailer outside Peshawar, Pakistan February 19, 2018. (Photo by Fayaz Aziz/Reuters)

Two white storks stand close to each other on their nest on a tree in Zerbolo, Italy, Thursday, October 26, 2017. (Photo by Antonio Calanni/AP Photo)

Internationally acclaimed German three-dimensional artist Manfred Stader adds finishing touches to his artwork in Cape Town, South Africa on 21 November 2010. Stader created this masterpiece to celebrate the opening of Speedo's first dedicated concept store in Africa. (Photo by Foto24/Gallo Images/Getty Images)

Members of the “Exit Point” amateur rope-jumping group stage a performance as they jump from a 44-metre high (144-ft) waterpipe bridge in the Siberian Taiga area outside Krasnoyarsk, November 3, 2013. Fans of rope-jumping, a kind of extreme sport involving a jump from a high point using an advanced leverage system combining mountaineering and rope safety equipment, marked the end of the group's jumping season and recent Halloween festivities. (Photo by Ilya Naymushin/Reuters)

A general view of Uluru is seen as it rains on November 28, 2013 in Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park, Australia. Uluru/ Ayers Rock is a large sandstone formation situated in central Australia approximately 335km from Alice Springs. The site and its surrounding area is scared to the Anangu people, the Indigenous people of this area and is visited by over 250,000 people each year. (Photo by Mark Kolbe/Getty Images)

A Sorb egg painter decorates an Easter egg while using bent spoons full of melted wax as coloring at the annual Easter egg market on March 16, 2013 in Schleife, Germany. Easter is a particularly important time of year for Sorbs, a Slavic minority in eastern Germany, and the period includes the tradition of painting Easter eggs that include visual elements intended to ward off evil. Many Sorbs still speak Sorbian, a language closely related to Polish and Czech. (Photo by Adam Berry)

LA Coroners leave the Beverly Hilton Hotel possibly carrying the body of the singer Whitney Houston in the early hours of February 12, 2012 in Los Angeles, CA. Singer and film star Whitney Houston aged 48 has died in her hotel room at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. (Photo/Toby Canham/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)