A new coronagraphic Apodizing Phase Plate (APP) has been placed since Period 86, in a pupil plane on NaCo and designed to work in the 3 to 5 micron range. APP Imaging is offered with either the narrow-band filter NB_4.05 or the broad band filter L_prime. It allows direct imaging (no mask) with an improved companion detection limit between 0.2 and 0.7” on one side of the PSF.

An alternative method for handling ESO Archive Requests for data and performing the instant download of data through a Download Manager is now available with full documentation provided in an Archive User Manual and in the FAQ. The new features are still subject to maintenance and are deployed in parallel to the existing user services for ftp retrieval and media delivery. Long term the Download Manager is planned to replace the ftp service and from now on already provides functionality to support the on-line PI-Pack service.

Phase 3 denotes the process in which principal investigators of ESO observing programmes return their reduced data products to ESO for storage in the ESO archive and subsequent data publication to the scientific community. Phase 3 is mandatory for ESO Public Surveys and for ESO Large Programmes since period 75.

A new query form has been released that provides access to pipeline processed HARPS (since October 2003) and FEROS (since April 2005) data.

In the framework of the ESO Large Programme "The ground-based counterpart of the CoRoT asteroseismic observations from space" (178.D-0361), time-series of high-resolution (R~48000) spectra have been obtained for 8 targets with FEROS@2.2-m ESO/MPI telescope, La Silla, Chile.

The ST-ECF is releasing the full set of ACS/WFC grism spectra into the Hubble Legacy Archive, consisting of 47919 1D and 2D spectra and associated multi-band image cutouts, extracted from 153 archival fields. This is the largest set of high-level spectroscopic data products publicly released to date. The ACS G800L grism spectra provides a wavelength range of 0.55-1.05µm, with a dispersion of 40Å/pixel and a resolution of ~80Å for point-like sources. These extracted spectra and associated ancillary data lead to the prompt classification of over 32000 unique sources and in many cases to the determination of the redshift of extra-galactic sources (galaxies and AGN).

VISTA, is a 4-m class wide field survey telescope for the southern hemisphere, equipped with a near infrared camera VIRCAM (1.65 degree diameter field of view at VISTA's nominal pixel size) containing 67 million pixels of mean size 0.339 arcsec and available broad band filters at Z,Y,J,H,Ks and a narrow band filter at 1.18 micron.

The LABOCA Extended Chandra Deep Field South (ECDFS) Submillimetre Survey (LESS) is a public legacy survey of the ECDFS at 870μm using the LABOCA camera (Siringo et al. 2009) on the APEX telescope (Gusten et al. 2006).

The HARPS polarimeter was commissioned in January 2010. The succesfull commissioning has allowed the full characterization of the polarimeter, and permitted to offer the new mode to the astronomical community starting from the ESO period 86. Read the announcement and the HARPS user manual for details.

Using the Infrared Spectrometer and Array Camera (ISAAC) mounted at the Antu Unit Telescope of the VLT at ESO's Cerro Paranal Observatory, Chile, deep near-infrared imaging observations of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF) located within the Chandra Deep Field South region were carried out in Ks band. Based on public ESO archival data a single co-added image was created covering 5.40 arcmin² of the HUDF region with a total integration time of 25.3 hours, an effective PSF of 0.36 arcsec FWHM, and a 5-sigma depth for point sources of 25.60 mag (AB) which is 0.67 mag deeper than the respective image resulting from the VLT/ISAAC NIR imaging survey that was carried out to support the GOODS project. To this end, data of the 21-hours integration obtained under ESO program 73.A-0764, led by I. Labbe, were combined with the ca. 6-hours integration of this field obtained under program 168.A-0485, led by C. Cesarsky (ESO/GOODS). The data set presented here was described in Retzlaff et al. 2010, A&A in press and utilized to characterize the completeness and contamination of the shallower GOODS survey tile F14 and to establish number counts of faint galaxies in Ks band.