English singer and songwriter Dua Lipa bends over for a sultry snap end of April 2022. (Photo by dualipa/Instagram)

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)

Students from St Andrews University are covered in foam as they take part in the traditional Raisin Weekend in the Lower College Lawn, at St Andrews in Scotland on October 22, 2018. The “raisin weekend” stems from a gift of raisins (now flour and foam) traditionally given by a first year student to their academic “parents” in gratitude for their guidance. (Photo by Russell Cheyne/Reuters)

A view shows a Lun-class Soviet-made ekranoplan, which is a naval craft and a ground-effect vehicle, on the Caspian Sea coastline in Derbent in the Republic of Dagestan, Russia on November 3, 2020. (Photo by Kazbek Basayev/Reuters)

Competitor Isaiah Webb attends the 2017 Remington Beard Boss World Beard & Moustache Championships held at the Long Center for the Performing Arts on September 3, 2017 in Austin, Texas. (Photo by Brian Cahn/ZUMA Wire/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

A woman dressed up for Halloween travels on a Metro train in São Paulo, Brazil on October 30, 2017. (Photo by Cris Faga/Rex Features/Shutterstock)

Cheerleaders wearing face masks due to the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) are seen at the first professional baseball league game of the season at Taoyuan International baseball stadium in Taoyuan city, Taiwan, April 11, 2020. (Photo by Ann Wang/Reuters)

Palestinian members of Gaza's Bar Woolf sports team perform with fire above the ruins of a building destroyed in recent Israeli air strikes, in Beit Lahia, on May 26, 2021. A ceasefire was reached late last week after 11 days of deadly violence between Israel and the Hamas movement which runs Gaza, stopping Israel's devastating bombardment on the overcrowded Palestinian coastal enclave which, according to the Gaza health ministry, killed 248 Palestinians, including 66 children, and wounded more than 1,900 people. Meanwhile, rockets from Gaza claimed 12 lives in Israel, including one child and an Israeli soldier. (Photo by Mahmud Hams/AFP Photo)