Free Astronomy Magazine July-August 2014

A close-up of the huge Meli- pal (8.2 metres diameter), with SPHERE now ready to take its first light. The synergy bet- ween the 4 twin units of the Very Large Telescope makes it the most powerful ground- based instrument in the world for observing the sky visible to the human eye. [ESO/J. Girard] Below, a short animation dis- closing the inside of SPHERE. [ESO L. Calçada/Jean-Luc Beuzit/ Eric Stad-ler/IPAG Grenoble] planets in formation where it is not clear whether certain structures that appear as lumps of light are actual plan- etary cocoons or spurious ele- ments introduced by the im- aging processes. SPHERE will now resolve these doubts by rotating the recording device on its optical axis between a shot and the next (of the same subject), in order to more easi- ly highlight the artefacts that rotate with the device. After having passed a series of tests in Europe last December, SPHERE then left for Cerro Pa- ranal, in Chile, site of the Very Large Telescope. The entire re- assembly of the instrument was completed in May 2014, and once installed at the Nasmyth focus of Melipal, the final fine-tuning phase began, culminated in the achieve- ment of the so-called “first light” of different targets observed us- ing different modes of SPHERE. Among the targets put through the imaging tests there were: