A look at VISTA´s powerful eye

The Paranal engineer Gerhard Hüdepohl checks the huge camera attached at the Cassegrain focus of VISTA, directly below the cell of the main mirror. VISTA´s powerful eye is a 3-tonne camera containing 16 special detectors sensitive to infrared light with a combined total of 67 megapixels. It will have widest coverage of any astronomical near-infrared camera. VISTA is the largest telescope in the world dedicated to surveying the sky at near-infrared wavelengths.