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)

Steam emerges from a cooling tower of the nuclear power plant Leibstadt near Leibstadt, Switzerland, November 18, 2014. (Photo by Arnd Wiegmann/Reuters)

A man sits under lanterns and decorations on a street ahead of the Chinese Lunar New Year in Chinatown Yangon, Myanmar January 23, 2017. (Photo by Soe Zeya Tun/Reuters)

Ethnic “Kam” (also known as Dong) women get ready for a traditional wedding ritual known as the “steal the chicken at the drum tower” in a minority Dong village in southwestern Chinese city of Congjiang, Guizhou province, China January 29, 2017. The ceremony held in the ethnic Kam minority village of Gantuan in Guizhou province is based on a tradition dating back some 500 years that was revived and modified in the 1990s for villagers and tourists. (Photo by Tyrone Siu/Reuters)

Omsin, a 25 year old femal green sea turtle, rests next to a tray of coins that were removed from her stomach after a surgical operation at the Faculty of Veterinary Science, Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, Thailand, March 6, 2017. (Photo by Athit Perawongmetha/Reuters)

Almost two years old male baby orang-utan Dalai looks on in the zoo in Dresden, Germany, 30 March 2017. Dalai was born to mother Daisy in June 2016. (Photo by Filip Singer/EPA)

A coach wipes away tears and comforts a girl who was feeling tired during gymnastics lessons at the Shanghai Yangpu Youth Amateur Athletic School in Shanghai, China, May 4, 2016. (Photo by Aly Song/Reuters)

Palestinian groom Mohamed abu Daga and his bride Israa wear face masks amid the COVID-19 epidemic, during a photoshoot at a studio before their wedding ceremony in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip, on March 23, 2020. Authorities in Gaza confirmed on March 22 the first two cases of novel coronavirus, identifying them as Palestinians who had travelled to Pakistan and were being held in quarantine since their return, as the United Nations warned of potential disastrous outcomes to an outbreak given the high poverty rates and weak health system in the coastal strip, under Israeli blockade since 2007. (Photo by Said Khatib/AFP Photo)