Free Astronomy Magazine July-August 2023

JULY-AUGUST 2023 tory in Chile. Using VISTA’s infrared camera VIRCAM, the team captured light coming from deep inside the clouds of dust. “The dust obscures these young stars from our view, making them virtually invisible to our eyes. Only at infrared wave- lengths can we look deep into these clouds, studying the stars in the making,” explains Alena Rotten- steiner, a PhD student also at the University of Vienna and co-author of the study. The survey, called VISIONS, observed star-forming re- T his image shows the HH 909 A object in the Chamaeleon constellation. New stars are born in the colourful clouds of gas and dust seen here. The infrared observations underlying this image reveal new details in the star-forming regions that are usually obscured by the clouds of dust. The image was produced with data collected by the VIRCAM instrument, which is attached to the VISTA tele- scope at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile. The observations were done as part of the VISIONS survey, which will allow astronomers to better understand how stars form in these dust-enshrouded regions. [ESO/Meingast et al.]