“Not for the faint of heart”. Casa Milà, better known as La Pedrera, is a building designed by the Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí and built during the years 1905–1910, being considered officially completed in 1912. It is located at 92, Passeig de Gràcia in the Eixample district of Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. (Photo by Stefano Scarselli)

A lightning strikes through smoke from fuel storage tanks that exploded near Cuba's supertanker port in Matanzas, Cuba on August 8, 2022. (Photo by Alexandre Meneghini/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)

Dramatic weather ahead the bank holiday weekend last night on the Isle of Wight Lightning over Bembridge Lifeboat Station on the Isle of Wight last night, May 2, 2024. (Photo by Jamie Russell/IslandVisions/Bournemouth News)

A rainbow appears as people enjoy a warm afternoon on a tour boat at Niagara Falls in Ontario, Canada on October 21, 2024. (Photo by Mert Alper Dervis/Anadolu via Getty Images)

A grizzly bear fishes for salmon under the Northern Lights in Klukshu, Yukon, in the north of Canada on March 3, 2025. The bear makes use of the darkness because the salmon can't see well enough to swim away. (Photo by Peter Mather/Solent News & Photo Agency)

Migrants seeking asylum in the U.S., who returned to the Mexican side of the border to avoid deportation, play soccer in a makeshift migrant camp in Braulio Fernandez Ecological Park in Ciudad Acuna, Mexico, September 22, 2021. (Photo by Go Nakamura/Reuters)