A Mexican soldier burns coca plants in the mountainous area of Atoyac de Alvarez, Guerrero state, Mexico, on February 15, 2023. (Photo by Francisco Robles/AFP Photo)

A model showcases designs by Eko Tjandra during JF3 Jakarta Fashion Festival at La Piazza Fashion tent Summarecon Mall Kelapa Gading on July 27, 2024 in Jakarta, Indonesia. (Photo by Robertus Pudyanto/Getty Images)

Spectators on day seven of the 2024 Wimbledon Championships at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club, London on Sunday, July 7, 2024. (Photo by Jordan Pettitt/PA Images via Getty Images)

The Mexican singer Peso Pluma performs on his Éxodo Tour at the Intuit Dome in California, US on August 24, 2024. (Photo by Christopher Polk/Billboard/Getty Images)

Revellers attend the Victorian Picnic during the Wave and Goth festival in Leipzig, Germany, May 22, 2015. The annual festival, known in Germany as Wave-Gotik Treffen (WGT), features over 100 bands and artists in venues all over the city playing Gothic rock and other styles of the dark wave music subculture. One of the biggest of its kind, the event attracts a regular audience of up to 20,000, the organisers said. (Photo by Hannibal Hanschke/Reuters)

People take photos as an Ariane 5 space rocket with a payload of four Galileo satellites lifts off from ESA's European Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, on November 17, 2016. Ariane 5 successfully launched on November 17 four satellites which will be part of the Galileo global satellite navigation system. (Photo by Jody Amiet/AFP Photo)

An Alitalia plane approaches to land as starlings fly at Fiumicino international airport in Rome October 14, 2013. Italy will have to notify a planned government-led 500-million-euro bailout of near-bankrupt airline Alitalia to EU regulators who will then assess whether the measure complies with EU state aid rules, the European Commission said on Monday. (Photo by Max Rossi /Reuters)

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)