Santiago and La Silla Observatory, Chile, 18 February – 2 March 2018

The ESO/NEON School is preferentially targeted to PhD students, advanced MSc's and early PostDocs. During two weeks of intense work the participants will have the chance to have hands-on experience of the full cycle from proposal preparation to data reduction. Students will have lectures on the basics of observing techniques and how to prepare observations for ESO telescopes in Santiago, and then go to the La Silla Observatory for three nights of observations with the NTT and Danish 1.54-metre telescopes. Full details on the School website.

Technical losses from VLT Visitor Mode observations have been analysed over four Periods (P95 – P98) and are reported here in response to a request from the Users Committee. The technical losses in Visitor Mode, and for global Service Mode and Visitor Mode in parenthesis are as follows on the VLT: UT1: 2.2% (3.4%), UT2: 2.5% (3.1%), UT3: 3.4% (4.6%), UT4: 1.2% (3.9%); on VLTI: 3.8% (7.9%).

1D spectra for telluric standard stars from the beginning of X-shooter operations in October 2009 until the present are now available as stand-alone science-grade spectra. About 30000 new 1D spectra have been added to the X-shooter data collection for a list of 1000 target stars; these numbers will grow as new spectra are added.

New versions of the transient and photometric catalogues from the PESSTO Public Spectroscopic Survey have been released to complement the previously released DR3 spectra.

The second catalogue release from the ESO Public Survey, the VST Photometric H-alpha Survey of the Southern Galactic Plane and Bulge (VPHAS+), is now available via the Catalogue Facility. This band-merged catalogue covers about 1100 square degrees, corresponding  to 48% of the VPHAS+ footprint covering the southern Galactic Plane and is based on images acquired up to 30 March 2015.

AMAZE (Assessing the Mass-Abundance redshift [z] Evolution) was a SINFONI Large Programme aimed at determining the mass-metallicity relation and galaxy dynamics in the redshift range 3 < z < 5 (Programme ID 178.B-0838; PI: R. Maiolino). The full set of extracted 1-D FITS spectra from this survey were released in February 2011 and have now been migrated and ingested in the ESO Science Archive Facility.

The 100th Observing Programmes Committee (OPC) met on 16–18 May 2017. A total of 1082 (8-hour equivalent) nights of Visitor Mode and Service Mode observations were allocated on the VLT/VLTI, VISTA, VST, the 3.6-metre and NTT, and APEX telescopes. The submission deadline for Phase 2 Service Mode observations is 3 August 2017; see the separate announcement for further details.

With the release of the telescope schedule, the preparation of Service Mode (SM) observations (Phase 2) starts. The deadline for the submission of the Phase 2 material for Period 100 observations is 3 August 2017.

Celebrating ESO's achievements and perspectives from 10 years of Tim de Zeeuw as Director General
ESO Headquarters, Garching, Germany, 28–30 August 2017

The last decade has witnessed a great expansion in the footprint of ESO on the world astronomical landscape, with many developments at Paranal and La Silla, the construction and start of operations of ALMA, the continuing success of APEX, and the arrival of new Member States. The Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) has advanced conclusively, funding has been secured, and construction has started. The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) has recently selected its southern site to be on the ESO area that also contains Paranal, with ESO as a partner.

Workshop to discuss science/technical aspects of AtLAST
ESO Headquarters, Garching, Germany, 17-19 January 2018

A two-year EU-ALMA study on the scientific merit for – and technical implementation of – an Atacama Large Aperture Submm/mm Telescope (AtLAST) is underway. We now invite the community to join in establishing working groups on science and technology aspects of AtLAST. The workshop will be a crucial forum to collect insights and feedback, and commit to a single vision for producing a single dish facility.