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)

The Arcaid awards highlight the best architectural photographs of the year – pictures of everything from giant arenas to tiny huts. The shortlisted photographs will be exhibited at the World Architecture Festival in Berlin, from 16 to 18 November, with an overall winner announced during the event’s gala dinner. Here: The stage for Haduwa Arts & Culture Institute, Ghana. Architect: (applied) Foreign Affairs. Nominated in the Sense of Place category. The open-air auditorium of this arts institute in Apam, Ghana, is built from ultra-strong curved bamboo. (Photo by Julien Lanoo)

In this photo taken Wednesday, April 30, 2014, a dragonfly sits on the nose of a Gharial, rare crocodile-like creatures, in the River Chambal near Bhopepura village in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. The narrow 250-mile stretch of the Chambal is a place of crocodiles and jackals, of river dolphins and the occasional wolf. Hundreds of species of birds, storks, geese, babblers, larks, falcons and so many more, nest along the river. Endangered birds lay small speckled eggs in tiny pits they dig in the sandbars. Gharials, rare crocodile-like creatures that look like they swaggered out of the Mesozoic Era, are commonplace here and nowhere else. (Photo by Altaf Qadri/AP Photo)

A giant panda cub is pictured in an incubator at the Ya'an Bifengxia Giant Panda Breeding and Research Center in Ya'an city, southwest China's Sichuan province, 21 August 2015. Ten tiny panda cubs made their first public appearance at China's Ya'an Bifengxia Giant Panda Breeding and Research Center in southwestern Sichuan province on Friday (21 August 2015). All of the ten giant pandas were born in 2015. The oldest of them is just two month old, while the youngest one was born a week ago. This marks the first time they were put together as a group since they were born. (Photo by Imaginechina/Splash News)

Christian Balderosdasco, 31, is being pulled up a mud pit after diving for 3 hours to look for gold on March 22, 2017 in Paracale, Philippines. Apart from tunneling and sifting sand, locals dive down murky swamps with the aid of a compressor with air flowing in a small tube for breathing, as they blindly swim under the mud for up to four hours to look for tiny rocks containing gold particles. For decades, local residents at Paracale town work in hazardous conditions scavenging under the earth and diving into tunnels filled with mud using only makeshift tools to mine for gold, often placing their health and lives at risk. (Photo by Jes Aznar/Getty Images)

Homeless people queue to get free hot food organized by social services during frost winter day in-Kiev on December 18, 2012. Nineteen people died of exposure in Ukraine in the last 24 hours amid temperatures of minus 20 degrees Celsius (minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit), bringing the toll this month to 37, the health ministry said Tuesday. (Photo by Sergei Supinsky/AFP Photo)

Farmers use tractors and burn tires, hay and manure as they block the highway between Morlaix and Brest during a demonstration against the market prices of their product, on July 22, 2015 in Morlaix, western of France. French farmers protesting over falling food prices threatened to step up blockades of cities, roads and tourist sites, as the government prepared to unveil emergency aid for them. Farmers have dumped manure in cities, blocked access roads and motorways and hindered tourists from reaching Mont St-Michel in northern France, one of France's most visited sites. (Photo by Fred Tanneau/AFP Photo)

A reveller covered in tomato pulp takes part in the annual “Tomatina” festival in the eastern town of Bunol, on August 30, 2017. The iconic fiesta – which celebrates its 72nd anniversary and is billed at “the world's biggest food fight” – has become a major draw for foreigners, in particular from Britain, Japan and the United States. (Photo by Jaime Reina/AFP Photo)