Nikon photo contest reveals fantastic microscopic world that surrounds us

Each year, art and science collide in the Nikon Small World photo contest to produce breathtaking (and sometimes unnerving) microscopic images.

This year's first place prize was awarded to Grigorii Timin, supervised by Dr. Michel Milinkovitch at the University of Geneva, for his image of an embryonic hand of a Madagascar giant day gecko.

Timin used image stitching to merge hundreds of images together to create the final image. "The scan consists of 300 tiles, each containing about 250 optical sections, resulting in more than two days of acquisition and approximately 200 GB of data," said Timin.

Second place was awarded to Dr. Caleb Dawson for his image of breast tissue showing contractile myoepithelial cells wrapped around milk-producing alveoli. Taking a week to process, the myoepithelial cells were stained with multiple rounds of fluorescent dyes and captured with a confocal microscope.

Third place was captured by Satu Paavonsalo and Dr. Sinem Karaman for their image of blood vessel networks in the intestine of an adult mouse.

Scroll through to see more of the winners in this year's contest. 

Red speckled jewel beetle (Chrysochroa buqueti rugicollis).

Lamproderma is a genus of slime mold. 

Slime molds were once thought to be a kind of fungus, but later work revealed that these puddles of goo are part of a motley group of microbes known as protists.

A fly under the chin of a tiger beetle. 

Moth eggs. 

This year, the photo competition received almost 1,300 entries from 72 countries.

Jumping spiders are a group of spiders that actively hunts its prey rather than trapping it in webs. Like most spiders, they have four pairs of eyes.

2022 marks the photo competition’s 48th year.

Growing tip of a red algae.

Daddy longlegs (Pholcus phalangioides) have been skittering around the Earth for more than 300 million years.

Cross sections of normal human colon epithelial crypts.

Longitudinal section through a white asparagus shoot tip.

Stinger of a small paper wasp (Vespidae Protopolybia).

Unlike bees, wasps can sting multiple times because they don't leave their stinger behind.

Close-up of an ant (Camponotus).

See last year's winners