Sussex to Discover a New VISTA of the Universe

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Sussex is part of a team which has been given the go-ahead to build a pioneering new telescope. The VISTA telescope will be able to penetrate unseen corners of the universe with a probing infrared lens. Costing £25 million to make, the 4m telescope will use instruments a hundred times more sensitive than anything else in the world.

Dr Robert Smith is at the helm of the Sussex branch of the project, which involves a nationwide consortium of universities. Robert, subject chair of Physics and Astronomy, is very excited about the venture: "The VISTA telescope will be able to map the whole sky for the first time. The combination of the size of the mirror and the amount of sky which it can view makes it completely unique, and on that basis it beats all existing or planned telescopes."

VISTA (Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy) will be able to map regions where stars millions of light years away are actually in the process of being born. The infrared beam can cut through the dust which blocks these stars off from light waves. In this way, it will also be able to detect elusive brown dwarf stars, and to identify galaxies which we have so far been unable to see. Questions surrounding the formation of stars and galaxies have so far remained unanswered because of the clouds of dust which shroud them, but the VISTA telescope will literally be able to shed new light on their origins.

The telescope will also be able to test a theory that Pluto, the most distant planet in our solar system, is actually part of a belt of rocky objects called 'kuipers'. VISTA will be able to tell us definitively whether this belt exists, and how big it might be.

The telescope, which is set to be completed by 2003 and will probably be located in the mountains of Chile, will give us our first complete picture of the mappable universe. And, says Robert, "Sussex will be among the first places to have access to the data it produces."