For people who want to know more about snow crystals, Libbrecht has simple advice: Get yourself to a snowy place and look up. Libbrecht takes his photos with a homemade microscopic camera, but he says that even a simple $2 magnifying glass will reveal wonders.

"An awful lot of the crystals look like sand, like little lumps, but you can tell the big symmetrical ones. It's a real hoot," he says. "You never know what you're going to find."