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)

Mr. Zhong Hua, of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, took this image of the peripheral nerves (those outside of the brain) in an 11.5-day-old mouse embryo, magnified five times. (Photo by Zhong Hua)

A competition, now in its 43rd year, dedicated to showcasing the beautiful and bizarre as seen under a light microscope attracted over 2,000 entries from 88 countries. Here: Honorable Mention by Emre Can Alagöz, Istanbul, Turkey: The eyes of a jumping spider, magnified 6x. (Photo by Emre Can Alagöz/2017 Nikon Small World Photomicrography Competition)

Caretaker Khalifa Sajad feeds crocodiles at the Sufi shrine of Hasan-al-Maroof Sultan Manghopir, better known as the Crocodile Shrine, on the outskirts of Karachi, Pakistan October 11, 2015. Pakistani Sheedi pilgrims are once again flocking to the shrine in Karachi that has been shunned for years amid fears of Taliban attacks. (Photo by Akhtar Soomro/Reuters)

Employees conduct a final check to fix any cavities in the seams of balls inside the soccer ball factory that produces official match balls for the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, in Sialkot, Punjab province May 16, 2014. It was when he felt the roar of the crowd at the 2006 World Cup in Germany that Pakistani factory owner Khawaja Akhtar first dreamt up a goal of his own: to manufacture the ball for the biggest soccer tournament on the planet. Last year he finally got his chance – but only 33 days to make it happen. (Photo by Sara Farid/Reuters)

Pakistani children are seen half buried at seaside during the solar eclipse to in Karachi, Pakistan on 21,June 2020. Some Pakistani people hope that burying is ailing people during solar eclipse. (Photo by Sabir Mazhar/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

Pakistani civil society activists release lanterns into the sky in Lahore on December 15, 2016, as they pay tribute to victims on the second anniversary of an attack on The Army Public School in the city of Peshawar. Taliban militants attacked on Pakistani Army Public School in Peshawar, killing 151 people mostly children on December 16, 2014. (Photo by Arif Ali/AFP Photo)

Pakistani volunteers carry an injured passenger following a bomb blast in Peshawar, Pakistan, Wednesday, March 16, 2016. A bomb ripped through a bus carrying Pakistani government employees in the northwestern city of Peshawar on Wednesday, killing a number of people, police said. (Photo by Mohammad Sajjad/AP Photo)