This journey begins with the familiar sight of the bright constellation of Orion where we see The Hunter on the right and the bright star Sirius in the lower left. Then we zoom in to the Hunter's Sword region which reveals the Orion Nebula, also known as Messier 42.
The Orion Nebula is a vast stellar nursery located about 1 350 light-years from the Sun. The small nebula to its left above is nebula M43. Then we move on to the sight of the VISTA terrestrial telescope of Mount Paranal, which observes in the infrared part of the electromagnetic spectrum. VISTA takes us into a huge zoom that allows us to admire all the splendor of the Orion Nebula and its surroundings, in a single image. Thanks to its infrared vision, this telescope can scrutinize in depth the diffuse and dusty regions normally hidden. Here he reveals superb, very active young stars lurking in dense clouds of gas and dust. Observations in the infrared domain allow astronomers to peer into the cold universe.
Bright gas from M42 surrounds young, hot stars at the edge of a huge molecular cloud. At the heart of the nebula, four blue stars, forming a trapezium, illuminate the diffuse matter dispersed in space at a great distance. The atoms absorb the stellar light and re-emit it according to their own colors. That of oxygen green, those of hydrogen and nitrogen are red.
Astronomical radio observations tell us that the Orion Nebula is only a tiny part of the large opaque cloud of Orion. From the contraction of this cloud were born the stars of the Trapezium as well as a group of proto-stellar nebulae located behind the Orion Nebula. The Orion Nebula was discovered in 1610 by Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc who was apparently the first to notice its nebulous appearance. Ptolemy (100-170 AD), Tycho Brahe (1546-1601), and Johann Bayer (1572-1625) identified the stars in the center of the nebula as a single large star. | 
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