in 2002 – the UK joined ESO, and VISTA became an in-kind component of the joining fee. The consortium then completed the construction and commissioning of the telescope, and the Science and Technology Facilities Council – on behalf of the UK – handed over the telescope to ESO, for the benefit of astronomers in all its member countries. VISTA Surveys 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. There are six large public surveys being conducted by VISTA: UltraVISTA, VISTA Kilo-Degree Infrared Galaxy Survey (VIKING), VISTA Magellanic Survey (VMC), VISTA Variables in the Via Lactea (VVV), VISTA Hemisphere Survey (VHS), VISTA Deep Extragalactic Observations Survey (VIDEO). These will take up the majority of the observing time in the telescope's first five years of operations. The surveys cover different areas of sky to different depths to attack a wide range of scientific questions. More information about each of the VISTA surveys can be found on the ESO — VISTA Surveys website and in the ESO — Public Surveys Projects webpage. Science with VISTA Because VISTA is a large telescope that also has a large field of view it can both detect faint sources and also cover wide areas of sky quickly. Each VISTA image captures a section of sky covering about ten times the area of the full Moon and it will be able to detect and catalogue objects over the whole southern sky with a sensitivity that is forty times greater than that achieved with earlier infrared sky surveys such as the highly successful Two Micron All-Sky Survey. This jump in observational power — comparable to the step in sensitivity from the unaided eye to Galileo's first telescope — will reveal vast numbers of new objects and allow the creation of far more complete inventories of rare and exotic objects in the southern sky. VISTA observations will support research in many astronomical areas. 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. Using VISTA data astronomers will be able