Ground-based and Airborne Instrumentation for Astronomy II
DOI: 10.1117/12.789153
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The 2nd generation VLT instrument SPHERE will include an integral field spectrograph to enhance the capa-bilities of detection of planetary companions close to bright stars. SPHERE-IFS is foreseen to work in near IR (0.95-1.65 micron) at low spectral resolution. This paper describes the observing strategies, the adopted hardware solutions for calibrating the instrument, and the data reduction procedures that are mandatory for the achievement of the extreme contrast performances for which the instrument is designed.