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)

A man reacts after catching a trout with his hands during an event promoting the Ice Festival on a frozen river in Hwacheon, about 20 km (12 miles) south of the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas, January 10, 2015. The annual ice festival, which is one of the most famous and biggest festivals in South Korea, expects to see more than 1,000,000 people attend. The festival lasts for three weeks from January 10 this year. (Photo by Kim Hong-Ji/Reuters)

A photographer is using a unique method to show the shift from day to night across famous cities in spectacular images. Daniel Marker-Moors' take on time-lapse photography – which he calls time slice – sees the photographer snap image after image, before combining them to create beautiful, vibrant works. His images usually focus on a point in the day with the most dramatic change in light, such as sunrise or sunset. Marker-Moors, from Los Angeles, begins by shooting hundreds and sometimes thousands of images from the same spot. Here: Chicago – 35 photographs, 15 minutes. (Photo by Daniel Marker-Moors/Caters News)

Park Ji-soo of South Korea performs her contemporary variation during the final of the 43rd Prix de Lausanne at the Beaulieu Theatre in Lausanne February 7, 2015. The Prix de Lausanne is an annual international dance competition for dancers aged 15 to 18. A total of 67 participants from 18 countries were selected from 300 applicants to take part in this year's week-long competition, from which the jury has shortlisted 20 finalists to compete for Saturday's finals. Six of this year's finalists will be awarded a one-year all expenses paid scholarship at one of the Prix de Lausanne's partner schools or companies, among the most prestigious in the world. (Photo by Denis Balibouse/Reuters)

A dead crocodile is seen on Huangsha Seafood Market in Guangzhou, Guandong Province, China, 22 January 2018. Tsukiji Market of China or Huangsha Seafood Market is biggest one in Southern China and one of the biggest in China, as there are literally hundreds of different varieties of fish and seafood scattered throughout the market. (Photo by Aleksandar Plavevski/EPA/EFE)

Since Rodrigo Duterte became president last year, his brutal campaign against drugs has claimed thousands of lives. Human rights groups say he is guilty of crimes against humanity, yet that is scant comfort to those mourning loved ones. Here: Constantino de Juan’s seven children sit on a sofa that still bears the bullet hole from their father’s shooting. Juan was preparing a spaghetti dinner on his daughter’s birthday when he was killed. (Photo by James Whitlow Delano/Funded by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting/The Guardian)

A member of the Community Police of the FUSDEG (United Front for the Security and Development of the State of Guerrero) search for a man, who ran away upon seeing the Community Police approach as they patrolled a street, in the village of Petaquillas, on the outskirts of Chilpancingo, in the Mexican state of Guerrero, February 1, 2015. Approximately 500 members of the Community Police from the FUSDEG took control of the security of the village of Petaquillas on the night of January 30 at the request of the people tired of the actions of organized crime, local media reported. (Photo by Jorge Dan Lopez/Reuters)