The archive of the La Silla Paranal Observatory (LPO) is a powerful scientific resource for the ESO astronomical community. We are delighted to announce new capabilities and user services to enhance data discovery and usage in the face of the increasing volume and complexity of the archive holdings:

• The ESO Archive Science Portal: New web-based access enables browsing and exploration of the archive with interactive, iterative queries. The results are presented in real time in various tabular and/or graphic forms, including interactive previews, allowing an evaluation of the usefulness of the data which can then be selected for retrieval.
  
• Direct database and Virtual Observatory access: The inherent limitation in the intuitive way that the web interface enables archive content to be discovered is that it is unsuited to more complex queries, such as those that include sequences with logical statements like “and”, “or” and “not”, or queries that join different sources of information. This restriction can be overcome through direct access to the ESO database tables. Extensive documentation is provided in terms of practical examples, which are intended to provide templates for users to customise and adapt to their specific needs.

Science workshops are an essential component of ESO's programmes and represent a unique opportunity to promote and foster ideas and collaborations within the scientific community. Every year, through the Directorate for Science, ESO provides support and funding to organise two workshops in Santiago and four in Garching, as well as co-funding some external workshops (see ESO Workshops calendar). In 2019, eight conferences have been selected with four being held at ESO Garching, two at ESO Vitacura, and two elsewhere (in Europe and Australia). ESO would like to sincerely thank all workshop proposers for the time and effort they invested in preparing their proposals and for their participation in the call, which resulted in a pressure factor of above three.

Higgs Centre for Innovation, Royal Observatory, Edinburgh, UK, 10–13 September 2018

The Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array (ALMA) is the most sensitive millimeter/submillimeter-wave observatory spanning 84–950 GHz, and will soon be extended to down to 35 GHz through Bands 1 and 2. However, ALMA's small field of view limits its mapping speed, and the size of the array elements restricts its ability to recover extended scales. In January 2018, a meeting was held to discuss a possible large, 40-metre-class single dish called the Atacama Large Aperture Sub-mm/mm Telescope (AtLAST). A new workshop has been organised to specifically address the many AtLAST science cases, and white papers covering the science, site selection, telescope design, and instrumentation will follow by the beginning of 2019. To get involved in this community effort, please register via the AtLAST wiki.

The commissioning runs of MUSE in Wide-Field Mode Adaptive Optics (WFM-AO) were carried out at the VLT on UT4 in June and July 2017. Several astronomical targets were observed to demonstrate the the capability of this new mode, find the best observing strategies and optimise the performance of the pipeline data reduction. The commissioning data have been released to illustrate the power of GLAO correction with MUSE WFM on different science targets; they can also be used as a reference to plan future programmes. Reduced data will be made available later this summer.

The LEGA-C ESO Public Spectroscopic Survey conducted at the VLT with the VIMOS multi-object spectrograph selects its target galaxies from the UltraVISTA catalogue in the 1.6 square-degree area of the COSMOS field and obtains deep, high resolution spectra from which the kinematics and stellar population parameters of the galaxies are extracted. The LEGA-C second data release (DR2) consists of science products from the second year of observations. Due to refinements of the reduction pipeline, the spectra from the first year were reprocessed and are also included in DR2.  

Science workshops represent a unique opportunity to foster ideas and collaborations. In a recent ESOblog entry, ESO's Director General, Xavier Barcons, outlined the many ways in which ESO and ESA are working together, to facilitate exchanges between astrophysics-related space-born missions and ground-based facilities as well as between their respective communities. In particular, ESA and ESO are joining forces to organise a series of international Astronomy meetings, alternating between ESO and ESA sites. A new Call was recently issued inviting astronomers to submit proposals for an ESA-ESO conference to be held in 2019.

You are cordially invited to participate in the 2018 Global Survey of Mathematical, Computing, and Natural Scientists, recently launched by the project “A Global Approach to the Gender Gap in Mathematical and Natural Sciences: How to Measure It, How to Reduce It?”. This is an interdisciplinary collaboration led by the International Mathematical Union (IMU) and the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC), supported by the International Council for Science (ICSU) over the triennium 2017–2019, and endorsed by the International Astronomical Union (IAU), one of the main partners in the project.

Lisbon, Portugal, July 9-14, 2018

By combining the light from four telescopes, ESO's Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) delivers angular resolution at milli-arcsecond scales, and astrometry at tens of micro-arcseconds. The available instrumentation covers the H to N bands, with low to moderately high spectral resolution. As long-baseline optical interferometric observing techniques are not widespread in the community, VLTI schools are periodically organised. The next school will take place from 9–14 July in Lisbon and will provide practical hands-on training on observational programme preparation, data reduction and analysis. Full lodging and subsistence costs will be provided to all attendees. The registration deadline is 1 July 2018, and may close earlier if all available places are filled.

Leiden Observatory, The Netherlands, 8-12 October, 2018

The Network for Young Researchers in Instrumentation for Astrophysics (NYRIA) is organising its fourth annual workshop at Leiden Observatory. This international group of early career researchers was created after a summer school which took place in 2014 in Santiago, Chile. Many of the participants have convened every year since, organising a meeting or workshop at different institutes in Europe whilst expanding this network.
The meeting aims to create a space to present the work of the attendants, to hold open discussions and to encourage collaborations between participants and institutes. The workshop will include a series of talks by all participants and guest speakers, tours of the Leiden University and facilities in Dwingeloo, and a hack-a-thon, in which all participants will work together on a current instrumentation problem.

Pucón, Chile, December 10-14, 2018

The bulge is a primary component of the Milky Way, comprising ∼25% of its mass. All major Galactic stellar populations intersect there, reaching their highest densities. Exploring the bulge is fundamental to understanding Galactic formation, structure and evolution. With the advent of multiplexed spectrographs on 8-metre class telescopes, and the availability of wide-field near-infrared photometry, our knowledge of the structural, chemical and kinematical properties of the Galactic bulge has improved dramatically in the last few years. At the same time, the interpretation of the data is not straightforward, and many fundamental questions remain. In this context, a host of exciting new results are expected in 2018. This conference aims to gather the international astronomical community to discuss these developments, and to begin to establish a consensus on their interpretation.