SPHERE — the Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet REsearch instrument — has been installed on ESO’s 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 Planétologie et d'Astrophysique de Grenoble, France, working in partnership with ESO. It is expected to revolutionise the detailed study of exoplanets and circumstellar discs.
The release, images and videos are available on:
http://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1417/
Translations are available on other countries page: Österreich, België—Belgique—Belgien, Brasil, Chile, Česko, Suomi, France, Deutschland, Ísland, Italia, Nederland, Norge, Polska, Portugal, Россия, España, Sverige, Suisse—Schweiz—Svizzera, Türkiye, Srbija
Kind regards,
The ESO Education and Public Outreach Department
4 June 2014
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