Space photo of the week — Extraordinary images of our sublime universe

The Very Large Telescope in northern Chile imaged a "super-Jupiter" exoplanet called 2M1207b, precisely 20 years ago this week. This was the first direct visual confirmation of a world beyond our solar system.

NGC 6744 is a spiral galaxy bigger than, but otherwise very similar to, our own. NASA has dubbed the large spiral galaxy the Milky Way’s ‘big brother’.

Voyager 2, NASA's longest-running mission, explored Neptune during a historic encounter on Aug. 25, 1989, sending back humanity's first close-ups of the planet.

A new image of the Serpens Nebula captured by the James Webb Space Telescope shows that when clouds collapse to form stars, all of those stars spin in the same direction.

This stunning image of dune fields near Mars' north polar ice cap, taken by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, showcases the impact of polar winds on the Red Planet's landscape.

The Hubble Space Telescope zooms in on a dense ball of millions of stars within a galaxy orbiting the Milky Way. Its ancient origins raise big questions about how galaxies form and grow.

Command module pilot Michael Collins took this iconic Apollo 11 photo 55 years ago today, after his historic trip around the far side of the moon made him "the world's loneliest man".

To mark its second anniversary of operations, James Webb Space Telescope scientists share a stunning view of the Penguin and Egg galaxies as they slowly collide.

Slovakian artist Martin Vargic's spectacular new infographics artistically portray, visualize and compare more than 1,600 planets in other star systems.

A new multiwavelength 3D visualization of the iconic "Pillars of Creation" showcases the differences between Hubble and James Webb Space Telescope data.