Free Astronomy Magazine July-August 2014

21 INSTRUMENTS JULY-AUGUST 2014 I t will be like observing from Paris the light of a candle just half a metre away from a searchlight beam in Marseille. This analogy made by researchers of the Institut de Planétologie et d'Astrophysique de Gre- noble, effectively summarizes the great re- solving power of a new “accessory” costing S PHERE in its journey towards the summit of Cerro Paranal, where technicians are waiting to install it at the Nasmyth focus of the Melipal telescope. [ESO/J.-L. Lizon] 10 million Euros built for the Very Large Telescope of ESO. It's called SPHERE, from Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplan- et REsearch instrument, and for 12 years it has involved in its construction about 120 technicians, engineers and astrophysicists of various European scientific institutes.