The Space Telescope Science Institute, Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, the Johns Hopkins University, European Southern Observatory, and Associated Universities, Inc. organized a Memorial Symposium to celebrate the life and work of our late friend and colleague Riccardo Giacconi. The Symposium was held in Washington, DC at the National Academy of Sciences on 29-30 May 2019. Presentations from the Symposium are now posted.

ESO is organising a virtual guided tour of the ESO sites to facilitate the interaction between recent ESO students in Chile and Germany and candidates interested in applying to the currently open programme. If you are considering applying for a studentship, ESO invites you to attend the tour on 5 November 2020, 14:00 CEST/10:00 CLT to discover the sites and learn more about the life of students at ESO, tips for your application or ask any other questions you might have. 

Due to the implications of the global pandemic and the suspension of science operations at the Paranal observatory since the end of March, ESO has postponed the end of VIRCAM operations, which were originally expected to take place until the end of Period 107 (30 September 2021). VIRCAM operations are now planned to go on until the end of Period 108 (31 March 2022). This extension should allow the completion of the remaining ongoing ESO Public Surveys, as well as Large Programmes approved by the OPC in previous Periods.

As part of ESO’s efforts to offer science data products to its community via the ESO science archive facility, all the spectroscopic data acquired since the beginning of UVES operations at the VLT from March 2000 to March 2020, i.e. 20 years, have been reprocessed. Whenever possible, 1D spectra have been stacked at the OB level. The master calibrations associated with the science data before March 2015 have been reprocessed for better quality and consistency. Due to this reprocessing, some of the early science products not available before are now provided. All 1D spectra products are available from the ESO archive, have quality control plots and associated 2D extracted spectral images.

Following the ramp-up to minimal science operations started on 9 September at Paranal and APEX (see separate announcement), observations with X-SHOOTER at UT3 have also recently resumed, and the instrument is now available for Director's Discretionary Time proposals.