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 demonstrator confronts a police officer outside the 18th District Police station during a rally after the death of Walter Wallace Jr., a Black man who was shot by police in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S., October 27, 2020. (Photo by Bastiaan Slabbers/Reuters)

A Goodfellow's Tree Kangaroo joey with its mother at Sydney Zoo in Australia on January 22, 2021. The 28-week-old male joey, who is yet to be named, has only just begun to pop his head and shoulders out of his mum's pouch. (Photo by Taronga Zoo via Reuters)

Jordan Mann (R) falls into the water as he and Jordan Cross compete in the first round of Men's 3000 Meters Steeplechase during day four of the 2020 U.S. Olympic Track & Field Team Trials at Hayward Field on June 21, 2021 in Eugene, Oregon. (Photo by Patrick Smith/Getty Images)

A racegoer reacts to picking a winner in the first race on the third day of the Royal Ascot horserace meeting, which is traditionally known as Ladies Day, at Ascot, England Thursday, June 17, 2021. (Photo by Alastair Grant/AP Photo)

A man distributes bread to Burka-wearing Afghan women outside a bakery in Kabul, Afghanistan, Thursday, December 2, 2021. According to U.N. figures from early November, almost 24 million people in Afghanistan, around 60% percent of the population, suffer from acute hunger, including 8.7 million living in near famine. Increasing numbers of malnourished children have filled hospital wards. (Photo by Petros Giannakouris/AP Photo)

A member of Korean Federation for Environmental Movement in a Santa Claus outfit attaches dumped cigarette butts at a cigarette butt Christmas tree in front of Korea Tobacco & Ginseng Corporation office in Seoul, South Korea, Monday, December 23, 2019. The environmental activist group called for a ban on the use of plastic for cigarette filters as part of efforts to protect the environment from toxic plastic pollution. (Photo by Ahn Young-joon/AP Photo)

Bathers brave the cold waters of the North Sea as they take part in the annual Boxing Day dip at Redcar Beach on December 26, 2019 in Redcar, England. The event attracts hundreds of people each year who take to the cold water wearing fancy dress as they help to raise money for a number of charities. (Photo by James Glossop/The Times)