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Celebrating two decades of SPHERE challenges and achievements

March 09, 2021

Reaching new heights with 100 consortium publications including the early exoplanet demographics release. more

GTO Science

In compensation for providing the instrument, the consortium received 260 nights of guaranteed time observations (GTO). more

SPHERE consists of four main subsystems: SAXO (Extreme adaptive optics module used to compensate for atmospheric turbulence at the instrument in real time), IRDIS (differential imaging and infrared polarimetry), IFS (infrared integral field spectrometry) and ZIMPOL (polarimetric differential imaging in the visible). more

SPHERE

Exoplanets SPHERE

The main objective of SPHERE is to detect and characterize, by means of direct imaging, giant exoplanets in orbit around nearby stars. more

SPHERE - On the Hunt for Exoplanets

Video June 05, 2015

Exoplanets Planet and Star Formation SPHERE VLT

Video with Thomas Henning and Markus Feldt produced by Klaus Jäger about the remarkable instrument SPHERE (Spectro - Polarimetric High- contrast Exo -planet REsearch) at the ESO Very Large Telescope in Chile.
(Movie in German, an English version will follow) Capturing direct images of exoplanets is one of the biggest challenges in observational astronomy for two reasons. First, the difference in brightness between the star and its planet is extremely large. Second, the apparent separation of such planets from their parent star is very small, due to their large distance from Earth. Direct observations therefore require both extremely high contrast and the best possible resolution. more

SPHERE

Celebrating two decades of SPHERE challenges and achievements

GTO Science

Instrument

SPHERE

SPHERE - On the Hunt for Exoplanets