A charred deer figure stands in the ruins of a devastated home, as the Eaton Fire continues, in Altadena, California, on January 14, 2025. (Photo by Shannon Stapleton/Reuters)

A Sadhu or a Hindu holy man sits on the banks before taking a holy dip at Sangam, the confluence of the Ganges and Yamuna rivers with the mythical, invisible Saraswati river, during the “Maha Kumbh Mela”, or the Great Pitcher Festival, in Prayagraj, India, on January 13, 2025. (Photo by Adnan Abidi/Reuters)

Chinese honor guards march after the arrival ceremony attended by Chinese President Xi Jinping and Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev at The Great Hall of The People in Beijing, China, 23 April 2025. (Photo by Iori Sagisawa/EPA/EFE)

A visitor takes a picture of the painting “Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures), 1972” by British painter David Hockney during a press visit ahead of the opening of the exhibition “David Hockney 25” at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris, France, on April 8, 2025. (Photo by Gonzalo Fuentes/Reuters)

This time exposure photo provided by the Santa Barbara County Fire Department shows a series of lightning strikes over Santa Barbara, Calif., seen from Stearns Wharf in the city's harbor, Tuesday evening, March 5, 2019. A storm soaking California on Wednesday could trigger mudslides in wildfire burn areas where thousands of residents are under evacuation orders, authorities warned. (Photo by Mike Eliason/Santa Barbara County Fire Department via AP Photo)

A baby Chimpanzee plays in its enclosure at Taronga Zoo July 14, 2006 in Sydney, Australia. (Photo by Ian Waldie/Getty Images)

Alluvial Fan, China. A vast alluvial fan blossoms across the desolate landscape between the Kunlun and Altun mountain ranges that form the southern border of the Taklimakan Desert in China’s XinJiang Province. Image taken by the ASTER instrument on NASA’s Terra satellite on May 2nd, 2002. (Photo by NASA/GSFC/USGS EROS Data Center)

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)