Stefania and Mariah play with a hose in South Norwood, United Kingdom on June 1, 2021. (Photo by Joe Plimmer/The Guardian)

A bakery worker carries fresh bread in Cairo, Egypt on August 1, 2021. (Photo by Amr Abdallah Dalsh/Reuters)

Models get ready backstage during the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Tbilisi in Tbilisi, Georgia, November 1, 2018. (Photo by David Mdzinarishvili/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)

Members of Japan's idol group “Virtual Currency Girls” wearing cryptocurrency-themed masks perform in their debut stage in Tokyo, Japan, January 12, 2018. Japanese female idols have teamed up to form the ‘Virtual Currency Girls’ group to promote the knowledge of cryptocurrencies through entertainment. Each of its 8 members represents a cryptocurrency: bitcoin cash, bitcoin, ether, neo, nem, ripple, mona, and cardano. (Photo by Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters)

A man reacts as he receives 100 whippings by religious police as punishment for pre-marital sеx, outside a mosque in Jantho, Aceh province on June 5, 2020. A couple in Indonesia's conservative Aceh was publicly flogged 100 times each on June 5 after they were caught having pre-marital sеx, as one pleaded for an end to the painful punishment. Aceh is the only region in Muslim-majority Indonesia to impose Islamic law, which allows whipping for a range of charges. (Photo by Chaideer Mahyuddin/AFP Photo)

Vendors selling vegetables wait for customers under a flyover in the early morning in Ahmedabad, India on February 1, 2017. (Photo by Amit Dave/Reuters)

Lightning strikes near Jacobsdorf at the Oder-Spree district in eastern Germany, September 1, 2015. (Photo by Patrick Pleul/AFP Photo)