If you wish to conduct a PhD in astronomy-astrophysics within one of the largest centres of astrophysical research in the world, which covers every subject from planets, stars, and galaxies to cosmology, you should seriously consider applying to the IMPRS studentship programme in Munich.

The Science Verification (SV) for the Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet REsearch instrument (SPHERE) will take place on the nights of 1–11 December 2014. All community astronomers are kindly invited to participate in this opportunity to obtain early science with SPHERE and thus to demonstrate the scientific capabilities of this extreme adaptive optics instrument.

The Science Verification (SV) for MUSE consisted of two observing runs (20–29 June and 18–24 August 2014). Forty four programmes were fully completed and another three received partial data. All data are publicly available through the MUSE SV webpage.
Additional to the previous announcement, data from all three MUSE commissioning runs (February, April – May and 25 July – 03 August 2014) are now available for download together with calibration files.

ESO Workshop, ESO Headquarters, Garching, Germany, 19–22 January 2015

This workshop will provide a forum for discussion of the likely astronomical landscape in the 2020s - both core science and burning topics, in so far as these can ever be predicted. Flowing from these considerations, the community is invited to advise the ESO Executive with regard to future facilities, including, but not limited to, those at the existing optical/infrared observatories on La Silla and Paranal, at the sub-millimetre observatories APEX and ALMA on Chajnantor and at the European Extremely Large Telescope to be built on Cerro Armazones.

Science-grade 1D spectral data products for UVES ECHELLE point source mode (with or without image slicer) and X-shooter ECHELLE SLIT (not IFU) mode are available via the Science Archive Facility. They cover the entire operational life of the respective instruments. New products are added, typically with a monthly cadence, as new observations are executed. PIs and their data delegates can exercise their privileged access during the proprietary period to download these science-grade 1D spectra, as they already can for raw data.

An extended set of FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions) on data reduction is available. The FAQs cover general questions, on Reflex and Gasgano and grouped by VLT and VLTI instruments. Specific requests for help should be directed to the User Support Department.

Information on the status and progress of your observing runs, and subscription to the e-mail night reports is available via  the User Portal page.

PESSTO (Public ESO Spectroscopic Survey of Transient Objects) is a public spectroscopic survey targeting supernovae and optical transients brighter than 20.5 mag. with the goal of classifying them as close as possible to their explosion phase. Data Release 1 contained more than 900 flux calibrated spectra for 298 distinct objects observed during the first year of the survey. These spectra are now complemented with release of 234 reduced and calibrated near-infrared SOFI images for 22 transient objects. The images, and the spectra, can be queried and downloaded from the Science Archive Facility.

The standard software to reduce APEX bolometer data (LABOCA, SABOCA and Artemis) is BoA. A set of helper scripts with detailed documentation has now been made available.
In addition, a script to reduce images with extended complex morphologies is also made available. This script allows a source model to be entered and iteratively used in the skynoise removal. Further annotated reduction scripts will be made available in the future.

The Call for Proposals for observations at ESO telescopes during Period 95 (1 April - 30 September 2015) has been released. Please consult the Call for Proposals document for the main news items and policies related to applying for time on ESO telescopes. All technical information about the offered instruments and facilities is contained on ESO webpages that are linked from the Call. The deadline for proposals is 12:00 CEST 01 October 2014.