Leeds revellers didn't let the storms put a dampener on festivities on December 31, 2023. (Photo by Nb press ltd)

People walk with umbrella during snowfall in Istanbul, Turkiye on November 19, 2023. (Photo by Hakan Akgun/Anadolu via Getty Images)

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)

American-South African actress Madelaine Petsch attends the 17th Annual Los Angeles Haunted Hayride at Griffith Park on September 26, 2025 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Amy Sussman/Getty Images)

Chinese workers maintain an Animatronic Dinosaurs at Gengu Dinosaurs Science and Technology company on November 13, 2019 in Zigong, Sichuan Province, China. There are hundreds of simulated dinosaur manufacturers in Zigong City. It is the largest simulated dinosaur manufacturing in China. It accounts for 95% of mainland China's production and 85% of the world's total. Its products are exported to more than 100 countries. (Photo by Lintao Zhang/Getty Images)

Russian President Vladimir Putin (R) looks through a window of a research bathyscaphe while submerging into the waters of the Black Sea as he takes part in an expedition near Sevastopol, Crimea, August 18, 2015. (Photo by Alexei Nikolsky/Reuters/RIA Novosti/Kremlin)

A competition, now in its 43rd year, dedicated to showcasing the beautiful and bizarre as seen under a light microscope attracted over 2,000 entries from 88 countries. Here: Honorable Mention by Emre Can Alagöz, Istanbul, Turkey: The eyes of a jumping spider, magnified 6x. (Photo by Emre Can Alagöz/2017 Nikon Small World Photomicrography Competition)

A fado singer smokes a cigarrette outside a fado house at the Alfama neighborhood in Lisbon on May 8, 2019. From fado sounds to Cape Verde mornas or bossa nova: the Lisbon nights, where musicians from all over the world meet, have largely inspired Madonna's new album, who has been in the Portuguese capital since 2017. (Photo by Patrícia de Melo Moreira/AFP Photo)