\n<\/a><\/strong>Revolutionary new VLT instrument installed<\/em><\/p>\n
SPHERE<\/strong> \u2014 the Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet REsearch instrument \u2014 has been installed on ESO\u2019s Very Large Telescope (VLT) at the Paranal Observatory in Chile and has achieved first light. This powerful new facility for finding and studying exoplanets uses multiple advanced techniques in combination. It offers dramatically better performance than existing instruments and has produced impressive views of dust discs around nearby stars and other targets during the very first days of observations. SPHERE was developed and built by a consortium of many European institutes, led by the Institut de Plan\u00e9tologie et d’Astrophysique de Grenoble, France, working in partnership with ESO. It is expected to revolutionise the detailed study of exoplanets and circumstellar discs.<\/p>\n SPHERE passed its acceptance tests in Europe in December 2013 and was then shipped to Paranal<\/a>. The delicate reassembly was completed in May 2014 and the instrument is now mounted on VLT Unit Telescope 3. SPHERE is the latest of the second generation of instruments for the VLT (the first three were X-shooter<\/a>, KMOS<\/a> and MUSE<\/a>).<\/p>\n SPHERE combines several advanced techniques to give the highest contrast ever reached for direct planetary imaging \u2014 far beyond what could be achieved with NACO<\/a>, which took the first ever direct image of an exoplanet<\/a>. To reach its impressive performance SPHERE required early development of novel technologies, in particular in the area of adaptive optics, special detectors and coronagraph components.<\/p>\n \u201cSPHERE is a very complex instrument. Thanks to the hard work of the many people who were involved in its design, construction and installation it has already exceeded our expectations. Wonderful!\u201d says Jean-Luc Beuzit, of the Institut de Plan\u00e9tologie et d’Astrophysique de Grenoble, France and Principal Investigator of SPHERE.<\/p>\n SPHERE\u2019s main goal is to find and characterise giant exoplanets orbiting nearby stars by direct imaging [1]<\/a>. This is an extremely challenging task as such planets are both very close to their parent stars in the sky and also very much fainter. In a normal image, even in the best conditions, the light from the star totally swamps the weak glow from the planet. The whole design of SPHERE is therefore focused on reaching the highest contrast possible in a tiny patch of sky around the dazzling star.<\/p>\n The first of three novel techniques exploited by SPHERE is extreme adaptive optics to correct for the effects of the Earth\u2019s atmosphere so that images are sharper and the contrast of the exoplanet increased. Secondly, a coronagraph is used to block out the light from the star and increase the contrast still further. Finally, a technique called differential imaging is applied that exploits differences between planetary and stellar light in terms of its colour or polarisation\u00a0\u2014 and these subtle differences can also be exploited to reveal a currently invisible exoplanet (ann13069<\/a>, eso0503<\/a>) [2]<\/a>.<\/p>\n![\"eso1417a_500x500\"](\"http:\/\/hobbyspace.com\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/eso1417a_500x500.jpg\")
<\/a>This infrared image<\/a> shows the dust ring around the nearby star
\nHR 4796A in the southern constellation of Centaurus. It was oneof the first produced by the SPHERE instrument soon after it was
\ninstalled on ESO\u2019s Very Large Telescope in May 2014. It shows
\nnot only the ring itself with great clarity, but also reveals the
\npower of SPHERE to reduce the glare from the very bright star
\n\u2014 the key to finding and studying exoplanets in future<\/em><\/p>\n