Your photos of the sunset, or the grand view from up top Signal Hill, are just fine.

They’re fine, relax.

The judges over at the Nikon Small World Photograph Awards are after something a little different, though. They’re all about getting up close and personal with things you can only see under the microscope, and after sifting through 2 000 entries from 88 countries these came out tops.

That picture above, by the way, is a closeup of the eye of an Opiliones (daddy long legs) magnified 20x. Magnify me, daddy.

Now you can play the guessing game with each of these, and we’ll show you what they are under the picture:

An image of plastic fracturing on a credit card hologram magnified 10x.

The eyes of a jumping spider, magnified 6x

A natural bridge (petiole nodes) connecting the abdomen and thorax of an ant, magnified 5x.

An image of a newborn rat cochlea with sensory hair cells (green) and spiral ganglion neurons (red), magnified 100x.

A Taraxacum officinale (dandelion) cross section showing curved stigma with pollen, magnified 25x.

Get your mind out of the gutter, please – a Cladocera (water flea) magnified 10x.

The face of a small moth magnified 5x.

The everted scolex (head) of a Taenia solium (tapeworm), magnified 200x.

This next one is unreal…

Wait for it – Synapta (sea-cucumber) skin magnified 100x. How weird that a sea-cucumber has skin cells that look like anchors?

If you’re still after more then you can head over HERE.

[source:theatlantic]