A red deer stag in Bushy Park, southwest London, pulls a comical face for the camera in the second decade of November 2023. (Photo by Andrew Wood/Caters News Agency)

Children play in artificial snow as they visit NightGarden, an annual holiday experience featuring thousands of lights and special effects, at Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden, Friday, November 15, 2024, in Coral Gables, Fla. (Photo by Rebecca Blackwell/AP Photo)

Wefa, 13, a female Western lowland gorilla, looks inside a Christmas box that contained food as a gift, after a caretaker dressed up as Santa Claus placed it in the enclosure of the family of gorillas, at Bioparc Fuengirola, in Fuengirola, Spain, on December 21, 2024. (Photo by Jon Nazca/Reuters)

An Indian boy sells flowers to Hindu devotees of Lord Shiva as they perform rituals after collecting water from the river Ganges during the holy month of Shravan, In Allahabad on July 22, 2019. Shravan is considered the holiest month in the Hindu calendar with many religious festivals and ceremonies. (Photo by Sanjay Kanojia/AFP Photo)

United States' Mikaela Shiffrin feeds a deer on the podium after winning an alpine ski, women's World Cup slalom, in Levi, Finland, Saturday, November 15, 2025. Photo by Roni Rekomaa/Lehtikuva via Reuters)

A man is silhouetted in front of the Allianz-Arena as he walks his dogs at sunrise in Munich, southern Germany, Friday, April 10, 2015. (Photo by Peter Kneffel/AP Photo/DPA)

Australia's Jessica Lim competes in the women's nangun final during the 13th World Wushu Championship 2015 at Istora Senayan stadium in Jakarta, November 17, 2015. (Photo by Reuters/Beawiharta)

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)