Panning across the VISTA view of the Tarantula Nebula

This pan sequence gives a closer view of a new VISTA image of the Tarantula Nebula in the Large Magellanic Cloud and the very rich surrounding area of sky. Many regions of star-formation, and many clusters of hot young stars are seen in great detail.

This infrared image, made with ESO’s VISTA survey telescope, is from the VISTA Magellanic Cloud Survey. The project will scan a vast area — 184 square degrees of the sky (corresponding to almost one thousand times the apparent area of the full Moon), including our nearby neighbouring galaxies the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds.