Students wearing mask hold hands to surround the St. Stephen's Girls' College in Hong Kong, Monday, September 9, 2019. Thousands of demonstrators in Hong Kong urged President Donald Trump to “liberate” the semiautonomous Chinese territory during a peaceful march to the U.S. Consulate on Sunday, but violence broke out later in the business and retail district as police fired tear gas after protesters vandalized subway stations, set fires and blocked traffic. (Photo by Kin Cheung/AP Photo)

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)

Kendall Jenner (R) attends Casamigos Halloween party at CATCH Las Vegas at ARIA Resort & Casino on October 27, 2018 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photo by Bryan Steffy/Getty Images for Casamigos)

A woman kneels down to pray at a “Pray and swipe right” event organised by online dating app Tinder, with social-distancing stickers featuring its flame logo on the praying ground, a photo booth where people can take profile pictures for their new accounts, and free offering sets, at the Trimuriti shrine on Valentine's Day in Bangkok, Thailand February 14, 2022. (Photo by Soe Zeya Tun/Reuters)

This photograph taken on June 4, 2022 shows fish vendor Somporn Thathom sitting at her stall as a passenger train passes through the Mae Klong railway market in Samut Songkhram province, around 80 kms (50 miles) southwest of Bangkok. Six times a day at the market, local customers and foreign tourists scramble into nooks and crannies while vendors calmly move their woven baskets of goods away from the tracks and close their umbrellas. (Photo by Manan Vatsyayana/AFP Photo)

Singer Rihanna in the audience at the 54th Annual GRAMMY Awards held at Staples Center on February 12, 2012 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Larry Busacca/Getty Images For The Recording Academy)

A model presents creations from the 2023 Spring/Summer collection by Japanese designer Lim Asafuji for the label “pays des fees” during the Tokyo Fashion Week in Tokyo, Japan, 01 September 2022. The presentation of the 2023 Spring/Summer collections runs from 29 August to 03 September. (Photo by Franck Robichon/EPA/EFE)