Following the closure of the Special Call for Period 107 on 1st September 2021, users will again be able to submit Director's Discretionary Time (DDT) proposals belonging to all the categories normally eligible through that channel, and not only for Target-of-Opportunity observations.

Between 12th and 18 July 2021 the second commissioning of the upgraded InfraRed Low-Order wavefront Sensor of MUSE, IRLOS, was carried out through an efficient collaboration between the local Paranal team and the remote support team in Garching. The goal of the IRLOS upgrade, which uses a new SAPHIRA detector with sub-electron readout noise, was to add at least two magnitudes to the limiting magnitude of the adaptive optics module GALACSI Narrow-Field Mode. Moreover, the low-order loop frame rate was increased to 500 Hz for brighter targets. The results of the second commissioning show that those goals have been met or exceeded.

The programmatic layer of the ESO science archive has been recently upgraded. The main new feature is the support of authorized data searches, but there are other improvements useful to the all users of the ESO programmatic layer.

The Cycle 8 Supplemental Call for Proposals is anticipated to open at 15:00 UT on September 8 with a proposal deadline of 15:00 UT on October 6. ALMA expects to allocate a minimum of 1500 h of observing time on the ACA in the Supplemental Call. Proposals are encouraged between a LST range of 20 to 10 h. Preliminary information is currently available. Complete details of the Supplemental Call will be posted on the ALMA Science Portal on September 8.

ALMA has begun work on correcting some Cycle 7 interferometric datasets for a visibility amplitude calibration error that affects fields containing strong astronomical emission -details were described in this previous announcement. For all affected datasets with a >10% flux scale offset that have yet to be delivered, including those that will be observed in the remainder of Cycle 7 and in Cycle 8 2021, ALMA will apply a renormalization correction during data processing to correctly scale the amplitude calibration before being sent to PIs. For affected datasets with flux scale offsets >2% but <10%, ALMA will provide renormalized data on request from the PI as needed. For affected data in the ALMA Archive, an investigation is underway and plans will be described in a future announcement.

A detailed report on the outcome of the ALMA Cycle 8 2021 Proposal Review Process is now available. The report details the proposal review process, proposal statistics and regional distributions, as well as the proposal distribution across science categories and receiver bands. The highest priority Cycle 8 2021 projects are listed at this link.

ESO's prestigious postdoctoral fellowship programme in both Garching (Germany) and Santiago (Chile) offers outstanding early-career scientists the opportunity to further develop their independent research programmes. From exoplanets to cosmology, observational, theoretical and fundamental astrophysics, these are all areas where ESO Fellows can benefit from a highly dynamic scientific environment, at some of the most advanced ground-based telescopes in the world. Do watch ESOCast 165 to hear what current ESO fellows have to say about the fellowship programme or watch the virtual tour to ESO's premises from last year where young scientists could ask question about the fellowship programme.

A new version of the PESSTO Multi-Epoch Photometric Catalogue provides photometric lightcurve coverage for the Public European Southern Observatory Spectroscopic Survey of Transient Objects (PESSTO) targets for which follow-up lightcurves have been completed.This catalogue complements and completes the DR4 release announced in March 2021.

The third and final data release of the Large Early Galaxy Astrophysics Census (LEGA-C, ESO programmes 194.A-2005, 1100.A-0949) is now available. The LEGA-C public spectroscopic survey targets the 1.5 deg² of the COSMOS field (RA=10hr, Dec=+2 deg) with the VLT VIMOS multi-object spectrograph from December 2014 to May 2018.

The PHANGS-MUSE project is an ESO Large Programme (PROGRAM ID: 1100.B-0651, PI: E. Schinnerer) which (including exposures from archival programs: 094.B-0321, 094.C-0623, 095.C-0473, 097.B-0640, 098.B-0551, 099.B-0242, 0100.B-0116) maps with MUSE 19 star forming spiral galaxies. This release provides combined mosaics of their central star-forming disk obtained by combining 5 to 15 MUSE pointings for each galaxy. In addition derived maps of emission line fluxes and kinematics as well as stellar kinematics are also included as ancillary files.