Dear Fellow Communicators,

Last month several projects where ESO is partner have been launched. Take a moment to have a look at them in case they are of interest to you or your audiences.

If you are an astrophotographer, you might want to consider applying for the Insight Astronomy Photographer of the Year, a competition with a grand prize of £10 000, or for the Photo Nightscape Awards, where the first prize is a trip to ESO’s Very Large Telescope in Chile.

The Summer AstroCamp is a new project ESO has joined, complementary to our winter ESO Astronomy Camp. This new camp takes place in Portugal and welcomes students from Europe.

We are running a survey targeted at people who are at a stage in their career where they are looking for a scientific studentship or fellowship programme. If you happen to be at this stage, please take a moment to fill out this survey to  help us more effectively promote ESO’s opportunities to you.

In case you’ve spent the last few weeks on a remote island without Internet: at the end of last month, astronomers found a system of seven Earth-sized planets just 40 light-years away. Using ground- and space-based telescopes, including ESO’s Very Large Telescope, the planets were all detected as they passed in front of their parent star, the ultracool dwarf star known as TRAPPIST-1. Three of the planets lie in the habitable zone and could harbour oceans of water on their surfaces.

Finally, we’d like to remind you of these events:

• The Our Place in Space ESA/Hubble exhibition in Venice, Italy, open until 17 April 2017. The exhibition can in principle travel to other locations. If you are interested in hosting the exhibition please email us.
• The Communicating Astronomy with the Public Conference 2018 in Fukuoka, Japan, 24–28 March 2018.

Let’s reach new heights in astronomy together!

Lars Lindberg Christensen (lars@eso.org)
Head, ESO education and Public Outreach Department (ePOD)

  ESO Announcements

	ESO Remains World’s Most Productive Ground-based Observatory 3 March 2017: A survey of peer-reviewed scientific papers published in 2016 and using data from ESO’s telescopes and instruments has shown that ESO remains the world’s most productive ground-based observatory ...
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	2017 Insight Astronomy Photographer of the Year Competition Opens — ESO in partnership with the Royal Observatory Greenwich 22 February 2017: The Royal Observatory Greenwich, in association with Insight Investment and BBC Sky at Night Magazine, has announced the key dates for the Insight Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2017 competition ...
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	ESO Announces Support of Summer AstroCamp — Win a free astronomy trip to Portugal 20 February 2017: ESO is proud to announce its new collaboration with the Centre for Astrophysics of the University of Porto (CAUP) to support AstroCamp 2017, an astronomy-focused summer academic program for secondary ...
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  ESOcasts

ESOcast 99 Light: ALMA Sheds Light on the First Stars (4K UHD) 8 March 2017: ALMA observations have revealed that a very distant galaxy, seen when the Universe was just 4% of its current age, was rich in cosmic dust. This ESOcast Light quickly looks ...

ESOcast 98 Light: A Galaxy On Edge (4K UHD) 1 March 2017: A new image from ESO’s Very Large Telescope gives a very detailed view of the edge-on galaxy NGC 1055. This ESOcast Light takes a quick look at this image and ...

ESOcast 96: Ultracool Dwarf and the Seven Planets 22 February 2017: Astronomers have found a system of seven Earth-sized planets just 40 light-years away. Using ground and space telescopes, including ESO’s Very Large Telescope, the planets were all detected as they ...

ESOcast 97 Light: 7 Earth-sized Worlds Found in Nearby Star System (4K UHD) 22 February 2017: This ESOcast Light presents five amazing facts about the 7 Earth-sized planets found in the nearby TRAPPIST-1 system, from their rocky composition to their potential to harbour water.