ESO, Garching, Germany, 6–8 May 2019

4MOST is a state-of-the-art, high-multiplex, optical spectroscopic survey facility currently under construction for ESO’s 4-metre VISTA telescope. During the first five years of operations 4MOST will be used to execute a comprehensive programme of both Galactic and extragalactic Public Surveys, and 30% of the observing time during this period will be available to the community. The process of selecting Community Public Surveys will be initiated by a Call for Letters of Intent for Public Spectroscopic Surveys, to be issued by ESO in mid-2019. In preparation of this Call, ESO and the 4MOST Consortium are jointly organising a workshop to prepare the ESO community for this exciting scientific opportunity, to assist potential PIs in successfully responding to the Call, and to foster scientific collaborations between the community and the 4MOST Consortium.  

ESO, Garching, Germany, 17–21 June 2019 

ESO is organising a special workshop to discuss the future science uses of the VLT when the ELT will be operational. The workshop will consist of invited reviews and contributed talks to discuss potential development paths for VLT and VLTI. Discussion topics will include new and improved VLT and VLTI instrumentation, potential modifications or upgrades to the facilities, changes in the operations model and synergies with other facilities. We encourage presentations of this nature and will schedule ample time for contributed talks.

ESO, Garching, Germany, 22–26 July 2019 

It is certainly an understatement that Artificial Intelligence (AI) has taken the world by storm, with breakthroughs appearing almost daily in the news. The sheer volume of astronomical data (which increases exponentially) necessitates a new paradigmatic approach – AI – which must be, to a large extent, automated and made much more efficient. This workshop has two aims: to present the current landscape of methods and applications in astronomy and to prepare the next generations of astronomers to embark on these fields. Artificial intelligence covers a wide range of algorithms and the first thing is to provide a clear map to navigate in this jungle and show which techniques is used for which kind of science. Thus, we aim at having a few invited talks by prominent speakers to set the scene. This will be complemented by a series of contributed talks in order to provide a clear panorama of the current use of AI in astronomy. We also expect to have many posters showing various applications of AI in astronomy. In addition, we will offer several 3-hour tutorials and hands-on sessions to allow the participants to dig into the techniques.

ESO, Garching, Germany, 9–13 September 2019 

More than 60 years ago, the Magellanic Clouds provided crucial impetus for the construction of large telescopes in the Southern hemisphere and the foundation of ESO. This workshop will provide a fertile forum for shaping the future of research related to the Magellanic Clouds by showcasing state-of-the-art results based on advanced observational programmes as well as discussions of expectations and projections in anticipation of highly multiplexed wide-field spectroscopic surveys (e.g., 4MOST, MOONS) which will come online in the 2020s. This conference also marks the quincentenary of Ferdinand Magellan's arrival in the southern hemisphere during his circumnavigation of the Earth. Very recently, in 2018, there was also Henrietta Leavitt's 150th birthday and the 110th anniversary of her discovery of the period-luminosity relation among Magellanic Cloud Cepheids.

ESAC, Madrid, Spain, 19–22 November 2019 

ESA/ESO SCIOPS WORKSHOP 2019 – Working Together in Support of Science – Cross Facilities Collaboration in the Multi Messenger Era

The upcoming ESA/ESO SCIOPS 2019 Workshop will take place at ESAC and will address the following areas:

• collaboration between large scientific teams in the multi-messenger era;
• how space- and ground-based observatories communicate their transient and observational capabilities, and can prepare and adapt them to provide scientists with access to time and data for multi-messenger programmes;
• cultural and policy changes needed to enable multi-facility time allocation, prioritisation of observations, publication of information on upcoming observations and data sharing;
• tools, services and standards to support coordination between facilities for the selection and publication of targets by survey facilities, coordination and publication of follow-up observations among observatories, as well as for publishing, searching, analysing and visualising data;
• tools and services to support collaboration between teams.