This is very likely the finest, most detailed image of the Orion Nebula in the world. This image has not been upsized. It is a very large file with very high resolution. This wide-field view of the Orion Nebula (Messier 42), lying about 1350 light-years from Earth, was taken with the VISTA infrared survey telescope at the European Southern Observatory’s Paranal Observatory in Chile. The new telescopes huge field of view allows the whole nebula and its surroundings to be imaged in a single picture and its infrared vision also means that it can peer deep into the normally hidden dusty regions and reveal the curious antics of the very active young stars buried there. This image was created from images taken through Z, J and Ks filters in the near-infrared part of the spectrum. The exposure times were ten minutes per filter. The image covers a region of sky about one degree by 1.5 degrees. The European Southern Observatory (ESO, formally the European Organization for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere; Observatoire europ austral in French) is a 15-nation intergovernmental research organization for astronomy. Created in 1962, ESO has provided astronomers with state-of-the-art research facilities and access to the southern sky. The organization employs about 730 staff members and receives annual member state contributions of approximately 143 million. Its observatories are located in northern Chile. ESO has built and operated some of the largest and most technologically-advanced telescopes in the world. These include the New Technology Telescope (NTT) (which pioneered active optics technology) and the Very Large Telescope (VLT), which consists of four 8-metre-class telescopes and four 1.8-metre auxiliary telescopes. Ongoing ESO projects include the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) and the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT). http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c6/VISTA%27s_infrared_view_of_the_Orion_Nebula.jpg