VISTA (telescope)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article or section contains information about an expected future scientific facility.
It is likely to contain information of a speculative nature and the content may change as the facility approaches completion.

VISTA
Organization	ESO
Location	Paranal Observatory, Chile
Wavelength	Optical and Infrared
Built	Under construction
Diameter	4m
Website	http://www.vista.ac.uk/

VISTA is the Visible & Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy, a 4m telescope which is being built at Paranal Observatory in Chile. It is expected that it will be operational in the first half 2008. It will have a wide field of view, and as the name suggests it will focus on infrared surveys of the sky. VISTA is being built close to ESO's VLT for a consortium of 18 UK universities led by Queen Mary University of London, and will become an ESO telescope on completion.

VISTA will be operational in spring / summer 2008, as the mirror polishing is taking longer than originally anticipated. While it is called the Visible and Infra-red Survey Telescope for Astronomy, it will (initially at least) only have a near-infrared camera. although it is also capable of operating in the visible with a suitable camera. The near-infrared camera will be the fastest surveying instrument in the near-infrared. Currently WFCAM on the UK InfraRed Telescope (UKIRT) is the fastest. ESO has selected six public surveys for VISTA which will take up 75% of the available observing time.