Infrared/visible light comparison of VISTA’s gigapixel view of the centre of the Milky Way

This pan video gives a closer look at a huge new image of the central parts of the Milky Way made by combining thousands of images from ESO’s VISTA telescope on Paranal in Chile and compares it with the view in visible light. These infrared data, which come from the VVV public survey, have been used to study a much larger number of individual stars in the central parts of the Milky Way than ever before. Because VISTA has a camera sensitive to infrared light it can see through much of the dust blocking the view in visible light, although many more opaque dust filaments still show up well in this picture.