Fishermen fill crates with sardines netted during the annual sardine run in Warner Beach, South Africa on June 3, 2025. (Photo by Rogan Ward/Reuters)

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)

Creations by fashion designer Guo Pei, one of China's leading couture artists, are seen on display during the “Guo Pei: Fashioning Imagination” exhibition at the M+ art museum in Hong Kong on September 17, 2024. (Photo by Peter Parks/AFP Photo)

Men skin slaughtered sheep on the first day of the Eid al-Adha Muslim holiday in Wad Hamid, about 100 kilometres north of Sudan's capital, on June 28, 2023. (Photo by AFP Photo/Stringer)

Crews move a 39 foot long, 16 foot tall, 2400 lbs. replica of a Tyrannosaurus Rex from behind the Museum Of Science And History in Jacksonville, Fla., to its new location in front of the entrance of the museum Wednesday morning, May 20, 2015, to kickoff the upcoming Dinosaurs Unearthed exhibit. The exhibiti, which opens this week, includes animatronic dinosaurs as well as prehistoric fossils and runs through September 7. (Photo by Bob Self/The Florida Times-Union via AP Photo)

Joshua Patino stands on a ladder to put finishing touches on a giant dinosaur exhibit at PAX East in the Boston Convention and Expo Center, Thursday, April 21, 2016, in Boston. PAX East, an annual celebration of gaming culture, is expected to draw tens of thousands of visitors Friday through Sunday. It's a place where serious gamers can preview unreleased video games and devices, compete in tournaments, hear live music and meet others for whom gaming is a way of life. (Photo by Elise Amendola/AP Photo)

A demonstrator confronts a police officer outside the 18th District Police station during a rally after the death of Walter Wallace Jr., a Black man who was shot by police in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S., October 27, 2020. (Photo by Bastiaan Slabbers/Reuters)

A person in a costume poses during the 2024 New York Comic Con, at the Jacob Javits Convention Center in New York City, on October 18, 2024. (Photo by Eduardo Munoz/Reuters)