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 student falls asleep as she holds a book containing a portrait of China's late chairman Mao Zedong during a lesson at the Democracy Elementary and Middle School in Sitong town, Henan province December 3, 2013. In a remote part of central China, the day starts at the Democracy Elementary and Middle School with a pre-dawn jog, some revolutionary songs and then an activity long since forgotten at other schools: reciting quotations from Mao Zedong's famed “Little Red Book”. While the ruling Communist Party that Mao led continues to hold him in esteem as the leader of the Communist Revolution, his radical policies and teachings have been largely shelved since his death in 1976 in favour of a pro-market approach that has turned China from a backwater into the world's second biggest economy. The 120th anniversary of Mao's birth is on December 26, 2013. (Photo by Carlos Barria/Reuters)

Challenger Bulgarian heavyweight boxer Kubrat Pulev (R) lies in the ring after being knocked down by Ukrainian WBA, WBO, IBO and IBF heavyweight boxing world champion Vladimir Klitschko (L), who celebrates with his brother Vitali (2nd L), as referee Tony Weeks checks on him after their title fight in Hamburg, November 15, 2014. World heavyweight champion Vladimir Klitschko knocked out Bulgarian challenger Kubrat Pulev with a fierce left hook in the fifth round on Saturday to retain his IBF title and end his opponent's unbeaten record. (Photo by Fabian Bimmer/Reuters)

A fisherman with a close bond to cormorants uses the flock of birds to catch big fish in Li river in Guilin, China. The aquatic birds can be seen perching on a bamboo raft before swooping into the calm water to grasp hold of prey. (Photo by Julia Wimmerlin/Solnet News & Photo Agency)

A shepherd and his flock in the Bitlis province of eastern Turkey in the first decade of April 2024. Shepherds regularly embark on gruelling journeys through the dusty outback, as they take their sheep to the high plateaus needed for grazing and then back to villages for milking. (Photo by Kahraman Kaya/Solent News)

A volunteer in the Kurdish Community Protection Forces guards wheat fields from fire or looting around the town of Tarbesbeyeh, also known as al-Qahtaniyah in Arabic, in northeastern Syria's Hasakeh Governorate near the Turkish border on May 30, 2024. (Photo by Delil Souleiman/AFP Photo)

The provincial highest chimney collapses as it is demolished by explosives in Shenyang, Liaoning province, April 28, 2014. The 150-metre-high chimney used to be part of a local heating factory, according to local media. (Photo by Sheng Li/Reuters)