The Lagoon Nebula:"Behind The Veil" (Infrared View) | VISTA Telescope

The Lagoon Nebula:"Behind The Veil" (Infrared View) | VISTA Telescope

This infrared view of the star formation region Messier 8, often called the Lagoon Nebula, was captured by the VISTA telescope at the European Southern Observatory’s Paranal Observatory in Chile. This color picture was created from images taken through J, H and Ks near-infrared filters. These were acquired as part of a huge survey of the central parts of the Milky Way. The field of view is about 34 by 15 arcminutes.

The Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA) is a 4-meter class specialized wide field survey telescope for the southern hemisphere, equipped with a near infrared camera VIRCAM (VISTA InfraRed CAMera) with 1.65 degree diameter field of view at VISTA's nominal pixel size, containing 67 million pixels of mean size 0.339 arcsec and available broad band filters at Z, Y, J, H, Ks and narrow band filters at 0.98, 0.99, and 1.18 micron.

Distance: 4,000 light years

Image Credit: ESO/VVV

Acknowledgment: Cambridge Astronomical Survey Unit

Release Date: January 5, 2011

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