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)

The double compound eyes of a male St. Mark's fly (Bibio marci), submitted by Dr. David Maitland from Feltwell, UK. (Dr. David Maitland)

Mr. Zhong Hua, of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, took this image of the peripheral nerves (those outside of the brain) in an 11.5-day-old mouse embryo, magnified five times. (Photo by Zhong Hua)

Merfolk gather at MerMania 2017, the world's largest gathering of amateur and professional mermaids and mermen in North Carloina, USA on January 21, 2017. (Photo by Brian Cahn/ZUMA Wire/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

A so-called “Supermoon” dominates the sky while traffic rolls in the streets in Naypyitaw, Myanmar, 03 December 2017. According to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) a series of three “Supermoons” – dubbed the “Supermoon trilogy” – will appear in the sky on 03 December 2017, on 01 January 2018 and and 31 January 2018. A “Supermoon” commonly is a full moon at its closest distance to the earth with the moon appearing larger than usual. (Photo by Hein Htet/EPA/EFE)

Meghan Puhr participates in a virtual realty presentation during an Intel news conference before CES International, Wednesday, January 4, 2017, in Las Vegas. (Photo by John Locher/AP Photo)

A cosplayer uses moving stairs during the first public day of the world's largest computer games fair Gamescom in Cologne, Germany August 23, 2017. (Photo by Wolfgang Rattay/Reuters)

Kiyomura Co's President Kiyoshi Kimura (C), who runs a chain of sushi restaurants Sushi Zanmai, poses with a 212 kg (467 lbs) bluefin tuna at his sushi restaurant outside Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo, Japan, January 5, 2017. Kimura won the bid for the tuna caught off Oma, Aomori prefecture, northern Japan, with a 74 million yen (633,000 USD) at the fish market's first tuna auction this year. (Photo by Issei Kato/Reuters)