SPHERE

First light in May 2014 :
http://www.eso.org/public/announcements/ann14013/

(I have not found a thread here on that important instrument...)

http://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-news/exoplanets/exoplanet-portraits-tale-new-instruments/

« …SPHERE saw first light on May 8th in an observing run that finished on May 21st.
“The instrument is performing exceptionally well, and we already took spectacular images,” says Ralf Siebenmorgen, chair of SPHERE’s instrument science and operation team… »

Now giving results...

ESO: The Strange Case of the Missing Dwarf

Eclipse timings of the K2V+DA binary V471 Tauri led to a prediction that a tertiary brown dwarf was present. SPHERE fails to detect it, implying that another mechanism (probably the Applegate mechanism) is likely at work.

On arXiv.
http://arxiv.org/abs/1502.05116

Attempts to image RV planets in five systems. Unfortunately none of the companions (HD 142 Ac, GJ 676 b/c, HD 39091 b*, HIP 70849 b, HD 30177 c) were detected. On the plus side, the detection thresholds were in the brown dwarf mass range, so at least it doesn't rule out the planetary nature of the companions.

Zurlo et al. "Imaging radial velocity planets with SPHERE"
https://arxiv.org/abs/1807.01324

* a.k.a. Pi Mensae b

A proposed method to try and directly detect Proxima b.

Patapis et al. "A simple optimized amplitude pupil mask for attempting to direct imaging of Proxima b with SPHERE/ZIMPOL at VLT"
https://arxiv.org/abs/1808.06819

They suggest trying it out on Gliese 876 b as an initial attempt.