Pottery heads by artist Johan Thunell are displayed at The Affordable Art Fair on March 15, 2012 in London, England. 120 galleries are displaying works costing from £40 – £4000. Photography, paintings, prints and sculptures are on sale from 15–18th March 2012. (Photo by Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images)

Tim Anderson final balanced rock stack in the Llano River. Tim Anderson, rock balancing “pro” from Pennsylvania, carefully worked to balance his stack on a dry spot in the Llano river Saturday March 12, 2016. He was an honored guest of the festival and enjoyed visiting Texas so he came for another year. The river was higher this year because of the rains so the balancers could not get to the better rock that were available last year. (Photo by Nell Carroll/American-Statesman)

A female rebel in Kabul, Afghanistan, circa 1979. Photo taken at a parade in Kabul in honor of the pro-Communist Saur Revolution. She was from the women’s battalion of the people’s militia (one of the anti-imperial groups that participated in the coup d’etat). (Photo by Viktor Khabarov)

Men try to get control of a bucking horse a Tradition Day rodeo exhibition during, in San Antonio de Areco, Argentina, Sunday, November 13, 2022. Tradition Day, aimed to preserve gaucho traditions, is celebrated to honor the birth of Argentine writer Jose Hernandez, author of the country's national poem, “The Gaucho Martin Fierro”. (Photo by Natacha Pisarenko/AP 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)

A Hindu devotee girl stands after getting her tongue pierced with a metal rod during the Thaipusam festival in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Tuesday, February 3, 2015. Thaipusam, which is celebrated in honor of Hindu god Lord Murugan, is an annual procession by Hindu devotees seeking blessings, fulfilling vows and offering thanks. (Photo by Joshua Paul/AP Photo)

A street vendor sells sliced fruits during a pro-government rally in Caracas, Venezuela, June 21, 2016. (Photo by Mariana Bazo/Reuters)