The Nikon Small World Microphotography Winners 2022

The 2022 winners in the Nikon Small World microphotography competition have been unveiled. The first place winner is the photo above by Grigorii Timin and Dr. Michel Milinkovitch of the University of Geneva. This little hand belongs to an embryo developing into a Madagascar giant day gecko. The gecko embryo was stained with fluorescent dye and the image was made by stitching together multiple high-resolution microscopic images. The whole hand is about three millimeters long. Unless you call it a foot, but even then it's only three millimeters long.



Second place went to Dr. Caleb Dawson of the The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne for this image of "breast tissue showing contractile myoepithelial cells wrapped around milk-producing alveoli."



The third place winner is the above image of the blood vessels inside a mouse's intestines. Satu Paavonsalo and Dr. Sinem Karaman of the University of Helsinki managed to make them pretty.

See all the top winners in this gallery, along with other galleries for Honorable Mentions and Images of Distinction.