Free Astronomy Magazine July-August 2023

JULY-AUGUST 2023 gions in the constellations of Orion, Ophiuchus, Chamaeleon, Corona Australis and Lupus. These regions are less than 1500 light-years away and so large that they span a huge area in the sky. The diameter of VIR- CAM’s field of view is as wide as three full Moons, which makes it uniquely suited to map these im- mensely big regions. The team obtained more than one million images over a period of five years. The individual images were then pieced together into the large T his image shows the IRAS 11051-7706 object in the Chamaeleon constellation. New stars are born in the colourful clouds of gas and dust seen here. The in- frared observations underlying the 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 telescope 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.]