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)

Galapagos – Rocking the Cradle: Four major ocean currents converge along the Galapagos archipelago, creating the conditions for an extraordinary diversity of animal life, April 25, 2016. The islands are home to at least 7,000 flora and fauna species, of which 97 percent of the reptiles, 80 percent of the land birds, 50 percent of the insects and 30 percent of the plants are endemic. (Photo by Thomas P. Peschak for National Geographic/World Press Photo)

In this September 1, 2014 photo released by the U.S. Geological Survey, fluid lava streams from the June 27 lava flow from the Kilauea volcano in Pahoa, Hawaii. The June 27 lava flow is named for the date it began erupting from a new vent. The Hawaiian Volcano Observatory issued a warning Thursday, September 4, 2014 to a rural community in the path of a lava flow on Hawaii's Big Island, as the molten rock moved to within a mile of homes. Observatory scientists said lava from the Kilauea volcano could reach the Kaohe Homesteads in five to seven days if it continues advancing through cracks in the earth. (Photo by AP Photo/U.S. Geological Survey)

NASA handout photographs from the various Apollo missions are shown in this combination photograph. The photographs are some of more than 12,000 from NASA's archives recently aggregated on the Project Apollo Archive Flickr account. (Top L) David R. Scott, command module pilot, stands in the open hatch of the Command Module during the Apollo 9 mission March 6, 1969. (Top centre) Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin Jr.walks on the surface of the moon during the Apollo 11 mission July 20, 1969. (Top R) Neil Armstrong, Apollo 11 commander, is pictured inside the Lunar Module during the Apollo 11 mission July 20, 1969. (Bottom L) Alan Bean holds a container filled with lunar soil collected during the Apollo 12 mission November 19, 1969. (Bottom centre) Scientist-astronaut Harrison Schmitt rides in the Lunar Roving Vehicle during the Apollo 17 mission December 13, 1972. (Bottom R) Harrison Schmitt stands next to a huge, split boulder during the Apollo 17 mission December 13, 1972. (Photo by Reuters/NASA)

In this handout image provided by Ogilvy, a burger made from cultured beef, which has been developed by Professor Mark Post of Maastricht University in the Netherlands (pictured) is shown to the media during a press conference on August 5, 2013 in London, England. The in-vitro burger, cultured from cattle stem cells, the first example of what its creator says could provide an answer to global food shortages and help combat climate change, was fried in a pan and tasted by two volunteers. The burger is the result of years of research by Dutch scientist Mark Post, a vascular biologist at the University of Maastricht, who is working to show how meat grown in petri dishes might one day be a true alternative to meat from livestock.The meat in the burger has been made by knitting together around 20,000 strands of protein that has been cultured from cattle stem cells in Post's lab. (Photo by David Parry)

A robot is seen on Mount Etna, Italy on July 4, 2017. Mount Etna, in Sicily, is a test bed for the approximately three-foot high, four-wheeled machine ahead of a future mission to the moon. It is being conducted by the German Aerospace Centre, the agency which runs Germany's space programme. (Photo by Antonio Parrinello/Reuters)

In this 2017 photo provided by Simon Pierce, Jonathan Green checks on a fin-mounted satellite tag on a whale shark in the Galapagos Islands area of Ecuador. Despite typically being bigger than a double-decker bus, the elusive whale shark has only tiny, almost useless teeth. It's also one of the least understood animals in the ocean. (Photo by Simonjpierce.com via AP Photo)

In this January 27, 2015 photo, penguins walk on the shore of Bahia Almirantazgo in Antarctica. Antarctica “is big and it's changing and it affects the rest of the planet and we can't afford to ignore what's going on down there”, said David Vaughan, science director of the British Antarctic Survey. (Photo by Natacha Pisarenko/AP Photo)