Britain Horse Racing, Royal Ascot, Ascot Racecourse on June 17, 2016. Chelsea pensioners with a racegoer posing between them. (Photo by Toby Melville/Reuters/Livepic)

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)

Soviet cosmonaut and the first man to travel in space, Yury Alekseyvich Gagarin (1934–1968) arriving in London for a Russian trade fair. (Photo by Douglas Miller/Getty Images)

A caterpillar driven ferry with a 24 horsepower engine takes holidaymakers from the mainland at Bigbury in Devon to Burgh Island, a quarter of a mile away. (Photo by Reg Speller/Fox Photos/Getty Images). 4th April 1935

LA Coroners leave the Beverly Hilton Hotel possibly carrying the body of the singer Whitney Houston in the early hours of February 12, 2012 in Los Angeles, CA. Singer and film star Whitney Houston aged 48 has died in her hotel room at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. (Photo/Toby Canham/Getty Images)

Palestinian athlete Ahmed Abu Hasira demonstrates his parkour skills during a lockdown amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in Gaza City on September 8, 2020. (Photo by Mohammed Salem/Reuters)

An Armenian serviceman fires a cannon towards Azerbaijan positions in the self-proclaimed Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijan, Tuesday, September 29, 2020. (Photo by Sipan Gyulumyan/Armenian Defense Ministry Press Service/PAN Photo via AP Photo)