ESO Public Surveys

A new chapter for European astronomy began with dedicated survey telescopes in the optical and near-infrared. These large collaborative surveys within Europe target many of the fundamental questions in astrophysics today, ranging from the nature of dark energy to the universality of the stellar initial mass function. Here we present the Public Survey projects and give information on the mechanisms that ESO has set in place to manage them, to ensure their legacy value and their usefulness for the astronomical community at large.