The project "Equation of State: SupErNovae trace Cosmic Expansion" (ESSENCE) aimed to collect ~200 Type Ia SNe over the redshift range 0.15 to 0.75 to study the equation of state of Dark Energy. Spectra were taken for this project with FORS1 in a Large Programme (ID 170.A-0519) and published by Matheson et al. 2005. Advanced data products are now available for these spectra via the query form of the Science Archive.

It is expected that phased ALMA will participate in some Global 3mm VLBI Array (GMVA) observations during ALMA Cycle 5 (1 October 2017 – 30 September 2018); see the full announcement for further details. Any GMVA proposal requesting phased ALMA during Cycle 5 must be submitted by the 1 February 2017 deadline; see the proposal call .

The latest release of ALMA Science Verification (SV) data will contain observations of the Sun obtained during the Solar commissioning campaigns in 2014 and 2015. The release contains mosaics and single pointing observations in quiet and active solar regions at Band 3 and 6 with the 12-metre, 7-metre and total power arrays. The data are available under ALMA Science Portal SV.

The 99th Observing Programmes Committee (OPC) met on 15–17 November 2016. A total of 1044 (10-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. Of these, 193 nights were allocated to filler programmes. The submission deadline for Phase 2 Service Mode observations is 9 February 2017, see announcement.

From October to December 2016, Unit Telescope 4 (UT4) was shut down to install the new Deformable Secondary Mirror (DSM), as part of the Adaptive Optics Faciity (AOF) project. The joint planning by the AOF Project and Paranal teams allowed a very efficient re-commissioning of the telescope, and tests were also successfully performed on some of the AOF sub-systems.

3rd Azores School on Observational Cosmology
5th Azores International Advanced School in Space Sciences
Angra do Heroísmo, Azores, Portugal, 27 August – 2 September 2017

In the coming years a range of ground- and space-based facilities will gather an unprecedented amount of high-quality data in observational astrophysics and cosmology. These will allow open cosmological problems, e.g., nature of dark matter, dark energy, inflation and neutrino masses, to be tackled, all of which require new physics. In order to fully exploit these datasets, the interplay of a broad range of expertise, encompassing theory, phenomenology, high performance computing, data analysis and instrumentation, is required.

Mergers, Proto-clusters, and Star Formation in Overdense Environments
ESO Headquarters, Garching, Germany, 17 – 21 July 2017

Proto-clusters, high redshift galaxy clusters, and merging clusters represent the initial stages in the formation of largest gravitationally-bound structures in the Universe. (Proto-)cluster assembly via mergers and accretion has a decisive impact on the subsequent cluster evolution, and is thus an important process to understand. The aim of  GCF2017 is to discuss cluster formation over the last ten billion years, from its beginnings to the present day.

The Kilo-Degree Survey (KiDS) is an ESO Public Survey carried out at the VLT Survey Telescope (VST) with the OmegaCAM instrument. KiDs is a weak lensing shear tomography survey and its core science drivers are to map the large scale matter distribution in the Universe and constrain the equation of state of Dark Energy. This catalogue is the first weak lensing shear dataset from KiDS Data Release 3 (DR3) images, based on 454 tiles and a total area of 449.7 square degrees.

The allocation of ESO telescope time for Period 99 (1 April – 30 September 2017) is emailed today. With the release of the telescope schedule, preparation of Service Mode (SM) observations (Phase 2) starts. The deadline for the submission of the Phase 2 material for Period 99 observations is 9 February 2017.

ESO and Excellence Cluster Universe Workshop
ESO Headquarters, Garching Germany, 24–28 July 2017

The fate of a galaxy is governed by an intricate ballet of gas flows: the flow of cool gas into the system, the conversion of these baryons into stars, and the ejection of gas enriched with heavy elements. Determining what rules and mutually relates these three aspects still remains a critical and very complex problem in cosmology and is the core topic of this workshop.