Panning across VISTA’s view of the Centre of the Milky Way

The VISTA infrared view of the region of the Galactic Centre is scanned in fine detail in this pan. The huge numbers of stars in the image are clearly seen in close-up. We start in a dense star-cloud, pass over a small knot of nebulosity buried deep in the dust and then close in on the centre of the Milky Way itself and two brilliant clusters, the Arches Cluster and the Quintuplet Cluster.