Welcome to the microcosm
The Olympic BioScapes International Digital Imaging Competition honors the world's most extraordinary microscopic images of life science subjects. This picture from Gerd Guenther of Duesseldorf, Germany, shows spherical colonies of a type of blue-green algae known as Nostoc commune. The photo, created using darkfield illumination, won 10th place in the 2011 competition. Click onward to see the rest of the top 10.