27 DECEMBER 2021
A room with a view
© ESO
The appropriately named VISTA (Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy) enjoys a breathtaking view from its dome on Cerro Paranal in Chile’s Atacama Desert. VISTA is the world’s largest telescope designed to map the sky solely in infrared light. The telescope was developed by a consortium of 18 universities in the UK and spends most of its time carrying out six public surveys of the sky. The primary goal of VISTA is to shed light on brown dwarfs, variable stars and ancient quasars. Observing the sky in infrared helps astronomers detect cooler objects in the universe that shine brighter at these longer wavelengths.