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)

Balloons light up as they are tethered to the ground as they take part in the night glow during the Isle of Wight Balloon Festival at Robin Hill Country Park, Isle of Wight, England on Saturday, May 27, 2023. (Photo by Andrew Matthews/PA Images via Getty Images)

Bowden Loch, near Melrose, Scottish Borders, Scotland. The Northern Lights made an appearance over the Uk on the evening of the 7th October 2024. (Photo by Phil Wilkinson/The Times)

A massive positive cloud-to-ground lightning strike hits in Coolidge, Arizona, 31 August 2016. Thousands of rain drops merge to form mammoth travelling sheets of water in these breathtaking monsoons. Veteran storm chaser and photographer Mike Olbinski captured the stunning beauty of monsoons in timelapses and stills while chasing storm systems across America. (Photo by Mike Olbinski/Barcroft Images)

A severe thunderstorm hits Omaha, Neb., on Wednesday, June 12, 2024. (Photo by Chris Machian/Omaha World-Herald via AP Photo)

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)

A frosty sunset is seen through icicles in Peremilovo village, 65 km (40,6 miles) north of Moscow, Russia, Sunday, December 16, 2018. Temperatures in the Moscow region on Sunday dropped to –12 degree Celsius (10 Fahrenheit). (Photo by Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP Photo)