Earlier this year, I had the pleasure of serving as one of several judges for the Nikon Small World contest. Our task was to sit in a dimly lit room and try to rank the hundreds of entries—images taken by professional and amateur scientists around the world using visible-light microscopes.

Some were easy: The rules of the contest, which Nikon has run since 1974, forbid images obtained with nonlight microscopes such as electron-based instruments. Any of those that slipped past the contest's initial screens could be discarded.

But most of the choices were very difficult. Even for someone red-green color-blind like me, the beauty of many of these images was, you might say, blindingly obvious. There were lots of diatoms—tiny single-celled algae—sometimes painstakingly arranged to look like common objects. There were also lots of insects, and some brain scans. But there were also rocks and other man-made items that had never been "alive."

In this slide show, we present this year's 20 winning pictures, along with captions describing what you're seeing and how the image was obtained.

Slide Show: View Top 20 Winning Photos from the Contest

6 Comments

1. 1. hbflyte 08:35 PM 10/15/08

   I love the slideshows here, but please, consider a gallery module that doesn't require a reload of the whole page.

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2. 2. sangramganguly 11:50 PM 10/15/08

   To follow up on the last comment, its always better to incorporate a shadowbox kind of effect, where the gallery just pops up and the background page goes dark and you can easily transition between images. ..Great pictures btw.. :)

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3. 3. bagsjr 05:09 PM 10/16/08

   Pic number 20 looks just like my aunt Fay.

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4. 4. Tan Boon Tee 12:36 AM 10/18/08

   Undoubtedly wonderful and marvelous images of the very small world! The photographs are of unsurpassed beauty. Just take a second look at the re-crystallized vitamin C. Is this Chinese dumpling look-alike stuff what I have been taking for years?
   
   Sciam, have more of this kind of pictures in future. Thanks.
   
   

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5. 5. gaart 05:42 AM 10/18/08

   This is a beautiful picture, but I'm seeing a serious cloning stamp usage on the left.

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6. 6. neuroboy6 12:08 PM 10/26/08

   I love the hippocampus one the best. Stunning!

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