A light railway train passes through a residential building on March 18, 2017 in Chongqing, China. Chongqing Rail Transit No.2 and a 19-storey residential building have been built across each other. The railway set its Liziba Station on the sixth to eighth floor in the building with noise reduction equipment. (Photo by VCG/VCG via Getty Images)

Vehicle lights illuminate a street after a massive blackout, in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Thursday, September 22, 2016. Puerto Ricans faced another night of darkness Thursday as crews slowly restored electricity a day after a fire at a power plant caused the aging utility grid to fail and blacked out the entire island. (Photo by Carlos Giusti/AP Photo)

The May Queen during the Beltane Fire Festival in Edinburgh, Scotland on April 30, 2022. A dynamic reinterpretation of an ancient Celtic celebration of the return of summer, the festival is centered around the story of the May Queen and the Green Man, and the lighting of the Beltane bonfire, symbolic of purification, healing and new life. Edinburgh's Beltane celebrations are the largest of their kind in the world with around 250 volunteer performers and thousands of spectators. (Photo by Jane Barlow/PA Images via Getty Images)

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)

“Nomascus is the second most speciose genus of gibbons (family Hylobatidae). Originally this genus was a subgenus of Hylobates, and all individuals were considered one species, Hylobates concolor. Species within Nomascus are characterized by 52 chromosomes. Some species are all black, some light with a distinct black tuft of crown fur, and some by distinct, light-colored cheek patches. Nomascus is found from southern China (Yunnan) to southern Vietnam, and also on Hainan Island. One of the genus' species, Nomascus nasutus, has been deemed “the most critically endangered ape species in the world”. All of the species in this genus are endangered or critically endangered”. – Wikipedia

Photo: A newborn White-Cheeked Gibbon clings to its mother in the Nanning Zoo on April 12, 2004 in Nanning, Guangxi province, China. The White-Cheeked Gibbon's natural habitat is Southern China as well as Vietnam and Laos. They are classified as highly endangered and are on the brink of extinction due to poaching and reduction of natural rainforests. (Photo by Getty Images)

A woman attends a boxing class at Princess Women's Boxing Club in Shanghai December 3, 2014. Women have boxed as long as the sport has existed but for years they were relegated out of national and international competitions in many countries around the world. Female boxers entered the ring in an exhibition match at the 1904 Olympic Games, but it was more than a century later when they were given the green light to make their Olympic debut in London in 2012. (Photo by Carlos Barria/Reuters)

French twins Thomas and Vincent (L) Seris take the tram in Bordeaux, November 12, 2014. Born with Xeroderma Pigmentosum (XP), the twins cannot be exposed to the sun and its ultraviolet (UV) light, which could provoke precocious cancers due to an autosomal recessive genetic disorder of DNA repair. Colloquially referred to as Children of the Night (Les Enfants de la Lune) the Seris twins are among 70 to 80 people in France who suffer from the genetic defect. The French association “Les Enfants de la Lune” reports that there are between five and ten thousand such cases in the world. Thomas and Vincent have been testing a new protective mask for the last year which is transparent and ventilated and developed by several hospitals in France. (Photo by Regis Duvignau/Reuters)

A girl dances in front of the digital art installation “Light in Dark” created by teamLab, a collaborative of Japanese digital artists, during a special exhibition of “Shake! Art Exhibition! and Learn and Play! teamLab Future Park” at National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation (or Miraikan) in Tokyo, Japan, 19 January 2015. The exhibition is held through 01 March 2015. (Photo by Kimimasa Mayama/EPA)