A Berber Moroccan woman, wearing traditional outfits, parades during the “Miss Rose” beauty contest as part of the yearly Rose Festival on May 13, 2016 in the town of Kelaat Mgouna, at the foot of the High Atlas Mountains in Morocco. (Photo by Fadel Senna/AFP 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)

The first load of passengers queuing for the Bennie Railplane in Glasgow; the inventor George Bennie is third in the queue. The streamlined cars are self propelled, driven by air screws in front and behind, and hang from a steel girder. (Photo by J. A. Hampton/Topical Press Agency/Getty Images). 4th July 1930

Indonesian tourists take photos at the Marina Bay in Singapore May 14, 2015. When Singapore celebrated its 50th birthday as an independent country in August,the city state bore little resemblance to the tiny island nation that was expelled from Malaysia in 1965. Its physical stature has swollen by 20 percent thanks to one of the world's most aggressive land reclamation drives. (Photo by Edgar Su/Reuters)

The giant metal structure sits 330ft above the ground on the roof of a 22 storey office block in Dutch capital Amsterdam on September 6, 2016. Tourists sit in a playground-style chair as they propel themselves them over the edge of the building with only thin-air between them and the ground below. Engineers spent several years designing and building the breathtaking swing. By being fixed to the top of a building it reaches new heights – dwarfing other swings around Europe but trailing behind the 1,150ft high mechanical rides at the Stratosphere Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photo by Huub Zeeman/SWNS.com)

Waves hit the seawall during heavy seas and high winds in Dawlish in south west Britain, February 2, 2017. (Photo by Toby Melville/Reuters)

Vlada Nikolchenko of Ukraine performs with the ribbon during the 36th European Rhythmic Gymnastics Championships in Kyiv, Ukraine, Sunday, November 29, 2020. Athletes from 23 countries participate in the championship in Kyiv. (Photo by Efrem Lukatsky/AP Photo)

A Russian Su-35S combat aircraft and a Tu-95ms strategic bomber fly in formation above a church during a rehearsal for the flypast, which is part of a military parade marking the anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany in World War Two, in Moscow, Russia on May 4, 2022. (Photo by Maxim Shemetov/Reuters)