HAWK-I peers into a stellar cocoon

Check this image out:

It's an infrared view of stars embedded in a cocoon of gas and dust. To an optical telescope there wouldn't be much to see there; the dust blocks visible light. But this image was taken in the infrared (at 3 microns, more than three times the wavelength the human eye can see) using a new camera on the Very Large Telescope in Chile. The camera, called HAWK-I (High Acuity, Wide field K-band Imaging) is pretty impressive. It is very sensitive to infrared light, has incredible resolution (0.1 arcseconds per pixel, which is basically what Hubble can do) and a wide field, peering at a field 7.5 arcminutes square. That means it's looking at an area on the sky about 1/12th the size of the Moon on the sky. For astronomers, that's a big bite o' sky. Better yet, it's sitting on the business end of the ...