It’s a shame that all data is not as pretty as the images in the Small World Microtography Competition, a 36-year-old award sponsored by Nikon. This year’s winner is Vanderbilt University biologist Jonas King’s image of mosquito hearts, magnified 100 times and pictured below.

Second place went to Hideo Otsuna, of the University of Utah Medical Center, for his image of a 5-day-old zebrafish head (below), magnified 20 times and captured on a confocal microscope.

Cell biologists aren’t the only winning entrants. Riccardo Taiariol, of La Spezia, SP, Italy, took fourth place with his stereomicroscope image of a wasp’s nest, magnified 10 times and shown below.

Duane Harland, of AgResearch Ltd. in New Zealand, takes an eerie image of a flea for 9th place.

Paul D. Andrews, of Dundee University captures a cancer cell in the act of dividing and takes 11th place.

See a gallery of the rest of the top images here.

Images: Nikon Small World Competition