Meet the new state of the art survey telescope at the European Southern Observatory's Paranal Observatory in Chile, which has already captured an amazing picture of the star-forming Carina Nebula.
The VLT Survey telescope is 2.6 meters long and has a huge 268 megapixel camera with a very wide field of view called OmegaCAM.
This is the largest telescope in the world that is dedicated to surveying the sky in the visible light spectrum. It's purpose is to map the sky with a very fine image quality.
At its inauguration at the Italian National Institute of Astrophysics Observatory of Capodimonte in Naples, Italy, researchers presented the their first images from the telescope: the best images of the Carina Nebula yet.
The Carina Nebula is a massive glowing gas cloud 7,500 light years away from Earth where new stars are forming and some of the brightest and most massive stars are located.
This star forming region has been frequently observed before because it is a great area to study the violent births and early lives of stars, but never before has such a large fine detailed image been taken. The nebula is so big only small portions have been imaged and studied before.
