... ESO, the European Southern Observatory . ... ESO . ... VLT/Paranal . ... SPHERE тАФ the Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet REsearch instrument тАФ has been installed on ESOтАЩs Very Large Telescope (VLT) at the Paranal Observatory in Chile and has achieved first light. ... SPHERE combines several advanced techniques to give the highest contrast ever reached for direct planetary imaging тАФ far beyond what could be achieved with NACO , which took the first ever direct image of an exoplanet ...