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 masked protester talks to a soldier during clashes after the funeral of Brig. Gen. Wissam al-Hassan October 21, 2012. Lebanese soldiers fired guns and tear gas to push back hundreds of protesters who broke through a police cordon and tried to storm the government headquarters in Beirut. (Photo by Hussein Malla/Associated Press)

School children take photographs as Queen Elizabeth II arrives in Valentine's Park Redbridge as part of her Diamond Jubilee tour of the UK on March 29, 2012 in London, England. (Photo by Chris Jackson/Getty Images)

For the April cover shoot of Interview Magazine, photographers Mert & Marcus (Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott; Mert (from Turkey) and Marcus (Welsh from the UK) are one of the premier photographers in the world) captured the stunning Keira Knightley in an attractive black and white photo spread. Rocking pieces from Louis Vuitton, Balenciaga, DVF, and YSL, Knightley looks hot and seductive with a cigarette hanging from her boldly painted lips.

CANNES, FRANCE - NOVEMBER 03: Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi leaves the conference centre after the first day of the G20 Summit on November 3, 2011 in Cannes, France. World's top economic leaders are attending the G20 summit in Cannes on November 3rd and 4th, and are expected to debate current issues surrounding the global financial system in the hope of fending off a global recession and finding an answer to the Eurozone crisis. (Photo by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

A stuntman performs in a car at the “Well of Death” at an exhibition in Srinagar, India, Friday, May 23, 2014. In the Well of Death, stunt drivers on motorbikes and cars drive in circles around the vertical walls of the well-shaped construction. (Photo by Dar Yasin/AP Photo)

In this Thursday, April 16, 2015 photo provided by Robert MacFarlane, a raccoon climbs up a skyscraper in downtown Toronto. Social media was abuzz Thursday with the photo of the raccoon peering from between the metallic rungs of a crane 58 stories high. (Photo by Robert MacFarlane)

Nepal's Kumari, or living goddess, adjusts her ornament as she watches the Rato Machindranath chariot Festival in Lalitpur, Nepal, Friday, April 24, 2015. Nepal's living goddesses are young pre-pubescent girls considered by devotees to be incarnations of a Hindu goddess. Selected as toddlers, living goddesses usually keep their positions until they reach puberty. (Photo by Niranjan Shrestha/AP Photo)