Messenger Issue 147

The Messenger is a quarterly journal presenting ESO's activities to the public. The highlights of this edition published in March 2012 include:

• A report on the progress of the Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE), a second generation panoramic integral field spectrograph for the Very Large Telescope (VLT).
• The Atacama Pathfinder EXperiment Sunyaev-Zel’dovich Instrument (APEX-SZ), four years of observing galaxy clusters.
• Testing the feasibility of the near-infrared surface brightness method to measure distances to Cepheid variables.
• The story behind the search of intermediate-mass black holes in globular clusters and their connection with supermassive black holes in early galaxy formation.
• The description of the GAIA-ESO Public Spectroscopic Survey, a large library of high quality spectroscopy of 100 000 Milky Way stars.

This Messenger is not available for sale.