UK’s Vista telescope takes stunning images of space

The first images have been revealed from a telescope that can map the sky much faster and deeper than any other.

The Vista (Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy) is dedicated to mapping the sky in infrared light.

Spectacular images, including some of the centre of our Milky Way, show, astronomers say, that the UK-designed telescope is working “extremely well”.

It is based at the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) Paranal Observatory in Chile.

When the UK was first negotiating to join ESO, Vista became an in-kind payment towards its subscription.

It was formally handed over to ESO at a ceremony in Garching, Germany on 10 December 2009.

Now that the telescope is up and running, its surveys will help astronomers to understand the nature and origin of stars and galaxies.

Professor Jim Emerson from Queen Mary, University of London led a consortium of 18 UK universities that conceived and developed Vista.

He said he was looking forward to a rich harvest of science from the new telescope and told BBC News that Vista could be “all things to all astronomers”.

“It’s going to be like building an Ordnance Survey map of the Universe – that people can use to search for many different things,” he said.

“It will survey the geography of the Universe and, with its incredible power, pick out the locations of interesting objects, which were unknown.”

Read more . . .

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Tags: center of the galaxy, eso paranal observatory, european southern observatory, galaxy cluster, geography of the universe, infrared survey telescope, jim emerson, map of the universe, ordnance survey map, spectacular images, stars and galaxies, stunning images, Vista telescope

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 12th, 2009 at 9:56 am and is filed under BBC, Cutting-edge Research, Innovation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.