VISTA was conceived and developed by a consortium of universities in the United Kingdom led by Queen Mary University of London[1] and became an in-kind contribution to ESO as part of the UK's accession agreement, with the subscription paid by the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC).

The consortium selected the UK Astronomy Technology Centre to take technical responsibility for design and construction of the telescope.

[3][8] The scientific goals of the VISTA surveys, which started in 2010, include many of the most exciting problems in astrophysics today, ranging from the nature of dark energy to the threat of near-Earth asteroids.

Within our galaxy, VISTA is expected to find many new brown dwarf stars and be able to test ideas about the nature of dark matter.

One VISTA survey is designed to find and study huge numbers of variable stars in our galaxy by taking images of the same areas of sky at different times.

[11][12] The first released image (left) shows the Flame Nebula (NGC 2024), a spectacular star-forming cloud of gas and dust in the familiar constellation of Orion (the Hunter) and its surroundings.

The wide field of view of the VISTA camera also captures the glow of NGC 2023 and the ghostly form of the famous Horsehead Nebula.

The picture on the right is a wide-field view of the Orion Nebula (Messier 42), lying about 1350 light-years from Earth, taken with the VISTA infrared survey telescope at ESO's Paranal Observatory in Chile.

The telescope's 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.

It shows the stellar nursery called the Lagoon Nebula (also known as Messier 8), which lies about 4000–5000 light-years away in the constellation of Sagittarius (the Archer).

In the example on the left (below the image of the Orion Nebula) the telescope took a family photograph of a cluster of galaxies in the constellation of Fornax (the Chemical Furnace).

[15] The objective to repeatedly image large areas of sky at seeing-limited resolution led to a unique optical design.

The infrared camera was built by a consortium composed of the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, the UK Astronomy Technology Centre, and Durham University,[18] and is the world's largest at almost three tonnes.

Also, the secondary mirror is undersized to avoid edge detectors viewing warm structure outside the edge of the primary; this means the aperture seen by any point in the image plane is 3.7 m. This design requires the camera's vacuum cryostat – which cools the detectors as well as the baffles – to be more than 2 m long, with a front window of 95  cm diameter.

Further dome panels can be opened to increase ventilation, and a wind shield can be deployed to close parts of the slit.

[20] On completion, the telescope was handed over to ESO, which has selected six public surveys for VISTA, taking up 75% of the available observing time.

[20] The combination of the large detector array and the short and frequent exposures necessary at infrared wavelengths results in a high data rate of 200–300 GB per night.