Carlos Melendez prepares to feed his pet squirrel “Colita” in downtown San Salvador January 29, 2015. (Photo by Jose Cabezas/Reuters)

Ma Jiaqi, 5, and her mother arrive at Beijing Railway Station for their train to Changchun of Jilin province, in Beijing, China, January 25, 2016. According to traffic police, over 2.9 billion trips will be made around China during the 40-day Spring Festival travel rush, which started on January 24. (Photo by Jason Lee/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)

A girl salutes to visitors before a show at the Mangyongdae Children's Palace in central Pyongyang, North Korea May 5, 2016. Pyongyang held a gala of song and dance performances by local school children on May 5 for visiting delegations of foreign journalists and tourists at the Mangyongdae Children's Palace. The event included orchestral, choir, and acrobatic performances, many of them with political undertones. The Seventh Worker's Party Congress commences on May 6, 2016. (Photo by Damir Sagolj/Reuters)

An internally displaced Afghan girl holds a child at a refugee camp in Kabul, Afghanistan May 31, 2016. (Photo by Mohammad Ismail/Reuters)

A car drives between trees in a small park in Frankfurt, Germany, Monday, April 8, 2024. (Photo by Michael Probst/AP Photo)

A cygnet keeps snug under its mother’s wing at Heronry Pond in Wanstead Park in east London in the last decade of May 2024. (Photo by Jeff Moore/The Times)

Women with red paint on their bodies participate in a rally to mark International Women's Day, in Bogota, Colombia on March 8, 2023. (Photo by Mahe Elipe/Reuters)