LA Coroners leave the Beverly Hilton Hotel possibly carrying the body of the singer Whitney Houston in the early hours of February 12, 2012 in Los Angeles, CA. Singer and film star Whitney Houston aged 48 has died in her hotel room at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. (Photo/Toby Canham/Getty Images)

Marc Berthod of Switzerland during the Audi FIS Alpine Ski World Cup Men's Super Combined on February 12, 2012 in Sochi, Russia. (Photo by Vianney Thibaut/Agence Zoom/Getty Images)

Natalie Burgener drops the bar behind her head while attempting to snatch 98 kilograms during the 2012 U.S. Olympic Team Trials for Women's Weightlifting on March 4, 2012 in Columbus, Ohio. (Photo by Jamie Sabau/Getty Images)

Indian Muslim children hold anti-US placards as they participate in a protest meeting against the film “Innocence of Muslims” in Kolkata on October 5, 2012. A low-budget, US-produced “Innocence of Muslims” movie has incited a wave of bloody anti-US violence in Libya, Egypt, Sudan, Tunisia, Yemen and in several other countries across the Muslim world. (Photo by Dibyangshu Sarkar/AFP/AFP 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 masked protester talks to a soldier during clashes after the funeral of Brig. Gen. Wissam al-Hassan October 21, 2012. Lebanese soldiers fired guns and tear gas to push back hundreds of protesters who broke through a police cordon and tried to storm the government headquarters in Beirut. (Photo by Hussein Malla/Associated Press)

The Sphinx breed of cat “Adam vom Feisastern” of the German breeder Sabine Braeuer waits on a jury table during an annual International Pedigree Dog and Cat Show in Erfurt, Germany on June 10, 2012. (Photo by Jens Meyer/Associated Press)

“The 8th annual Water War on Friday in the center of Tel-Aviv, Israel turned into a battlefield, quite literally. As two thousand people were having fun in the square, some water-fighters took to more radical behavior, targeting passing cars, motorcycles and public buses”. – iReport.cnn.com (Photo by Sergey Demyanchuk)