The Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA): Looking Back at Commissioning

VISTA, the Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy, is a 4.1-metre wide-field survey telescope, equipped with a 1.65-degree field, (67-Mpixel) nearinfrared (NIR) camera, for performing extensive surveys of the southern skies with sensitivity matched to the needs of 8-metre-class telescopes. Over its first five years of operations, the majority of VISTA’s time will be used for six ESO Public Surveys (Arnaboldi et al., 2007). NIR imaging surveys particularly target the cold, the obscured, and the high redshift Universe, to generate science directly and also in order to select objects worthy of further study by the Very Large Telescope (VLT).