Free Astronomy Magazine July-August 2018

44 JULY-AUGUST 2018 SPACE CHRONICLES SPHERE reveals fascinating zoo of discs around young stars by ESO T he SPHERE instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile allows as- tronomers to suppress the brilliant light of nearby stars in order to ob- tain a better view of the regions surrounding them. This collection of new SPHERE images is just a sample of the wide variety of dusty discs being found around young stars. These discs are wildly different in size and shape — some contain bright rings, some dark rings, and some even resemble hamburgers. They also differ dramatically in ap- pearance depending on their orien- tation in the sky — from circular face-on discs to narrow discs seen almost edge-on. SPHERE’s primary task is to discover and study giant exoplanets orbiting T his spectacular image from the SPHERE instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope shows the dusty disc around the young star IM Lupi in finer detail than ever before. [ESO/H. Avenhaus et al./DARTT-S collaboration]