French actress Sophie Marceau and Irish actor Pierce Brosnan in film “The World is Not Enough” by Michael Apted, 1999. (Photo by Keith Hamshere/Sygma via Getty Images)

A severe thunderstorm hits Omaha, Neb., on Wednesday, June 12, 2024. (Photo by Chris Machian/Omaha World-Herald via AP Photo)

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)

An Afghan girl makes a pile of unbaked bricks near the road passing through the Shamali Plains, about 10 kilometers (6 miles), west of Bagram, Afghanistan, Wednesay April 9, 2003. Children assist parents in their job to supplement family income. (Photo by Gurinder Osan/AP Photo)

The waning moon sets behind leafless sumac trees on a crisp, clear morning, Thursday, December 15, 2016, in Portland, Maine. Much of the northern Mid-Atlantic and Northeast will stay cold for the next couple of days as the arctic air remains stuck over the northern Appalachians, the National Weather Service said. (Photo by Robert F. Bukaty/AP Photo)

Cars drive under a rainbow near Bad Langensalza, Germany, Wednesday, November 2, 2016. (Photo by Jens Meyer/AP Photo)

A model presents a creation at a metro station during a show opening the Moscow Fashion Week in Moscow, Russia on October 22, 2019. (Photo by Evgenia Novozhenina/Reuters)

Aliana Alexis of Haiti stands on the concrete slab of what is left of her home after destruction from Hurricane Dorian in an area called “The Mud” at Marsh Harbour in Great Abaco Island, Bahamas on September 5, 2019. Hurricane Dorian lashed the Carolinas with driving rain and fierce winds as it neared the US east coast Thursday after devastating the Bahamas and killing at least 20 people. (Photo by Al Diaz/Zuma Press via AFP Photo)