ESO Telescope Uncovers Concealed Perspectives of Enormous Stellar Nurseries

Astronomers have used the Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA) at the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) Paranal Observatory in Chile to create a vast infrared atlas of five nearby stellar nurseries. The atlas was created by piecing together more than one million images and reveals young stars in the making, embedded in thick clouds of dust. The survey, called VISIONS, observed star-forming regions in the constellations of Orion, Ophiuchus, Chamaeleon, Corona Australis and Lupus. These regions are less than 1,500 light-years away and so large that they span a huge area in the sky. The diameter of VISTA’s field of view is as wide as three full Moons, which makes it uniquely suited to map these immensely big regions. The team obtained more than one million images over a period of five years. The individual images were then pieced together into the large mosaics released here, revealing vast cosmic landscapes. These detailed panoramas feature dark patches of dust, glowing clouds, newly-born stars and the distant background stars of the Milky Way.