A group of young men use a selfie stick to take a picture of themselves in shallow waters known as the first cataract of the River Nile outside Khartoum, Sudan, May 22, 2015. In Sudan, which faces insurgences in the western region of Darfur and along its border with breakaway South Sudan, as well as double-digit inflation and high unemployment, life goes on for young people in the capital Khartoum. (Photo by Mohamed Nureldin Abdallah/Reuters)

In this Wednesday, April 15, 2020 file photo, a motorcycle delivery man rides past a billboard urging people to stay home over the coronavirus pandemic in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Wealthier Western countries are considering how to ease lockdown restrictions and start taking gradual steps toward reviving business and daily life. But many developing countries, particularly in the Middle East and Africa, can hardly afford the luxury of any misstep. (Photo by Jon Gambrell/AP Photo/File)

Kate Upton, from left, Maya Jama and Victoria Justice attend the Philipp Plein 2018 Fall/Winter Runway Show during New York Fashion Week at the Brooklyn Navy Yard on Saturday, February 10, 2018, in New York. (Photo by Brent N. Clarke/Invision/AP Photo)

A boy reaches for a ball on a creek clogged with plastic waste on April 15, 2023 in Caloocan, Metro Manila, Philippines. (Photo by Ezra Acayan/Getty Images)

A vendor arranges dates on his cart at a market in Rawalpindi on June 1, 2023. (Photo by Farooq Naeem/AFP Photo)

A woman reacts while walking among the ruins of damaged buildings following heavy fighting between government troops and Kurdish fighters, on March 2, 2016 in the southeastern Turkey Kurdish town of Cizre, near the border with Syria and Iraq. Thousands in Turkey's Kurdish-majority town of Cizre started returning to their homes today after authorities partially lifted a curfew in place since December for a controversial military operation to root out separatist rebels. (Photo by Yasin Akgül/AFP Photo)

Australian World War Two veterans place crosses and flags at graves before attending the French-British ceremony at the British War cemetery in Bayeux, June 6, 2014. REUTERS/Leon Neal/Pool

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)