Science Announcements

ESO Fellowship Programme 2026 / 2027

Published: 21 Aug 2026
ESO's prestigious postdoctoral fellowship programme in both Garching (Germany) and Santiago (Chile) offers outstanding early-career scientists the opportunity to further develop their independent research programmes. From exoplanets to cosmology, observational, theoretical and fundamental astrophysics, these are all areas where ESO Fellows can benefit from a highly dynamic scientific environment, at some of the most advanced ground-based telescopes in the world. Do watch ESOCast 165 to hear what previous ESO fellows have to say about the fellowship programme or watch the virtual tour to ESO's premises from 2020 or 2021 where young scientists could ask questions about the fellowship programme.
Go to Announcement

Registration Open for ESO Workshop "Bridging Horizons: Harnessing ESO's Current Facilities for the Dawn of Exoplanet Population Studies", 2-6 November 2026

Published: 21 Aug 2026
Observations with the VLT, VLTI, and ALMA have pioneered exoplanet science over the past decade. With upcoming results from ESA missions such as Gaia, PLATO, and Ariel, exoplanet research is entering a transformative era of population-scale characterisation surveys. This workshop will bring the community together to explore how current ESO facilities, together with powerful archival resources, can best complement exoplanet demographics, atmospheres, and planet formation at the dawn of population-scale studies.
Go to Announcement

Fast Track Channel FTC 117A Time Allocation

Published: 20 Aug 2026
The time allocation process for ESO telescopes for the first Fast Track Channel FTC 117A (1 September 2026 - 28 February 2027) has been completed. This was based on the scientific evaluation of the Distributed Peer Review (DPR). A total of 505 hours of Service Mode observations (excluding filler programmes) were allocated on the VLT/VLTI, which is 10% higher than the total time initially reserved for this first FTC call (460 hours). As a reminder, only VLT/VLTI Normal programmes with a maximum time request of 30 hours were offered in FTC 117A.
Go to Announcement

Release of SPHERE Data Indicating the Presence of a Companion for Betelgeuse

Published: 19 Aug 2026
Betelgeuse is the most studied Red Super Giant. In 2024, through a reinterpretation of its long secondary period (LSP), a close orbiting stellar companion was suggested to exist, with a maximum elongation in December 2024. The goal was to search for this secondary component.
Go to Announcement

First Data Release from the INSPIRING ESO Large Programme

Published: 23 Jul 2026
The first Phase 3 data release from the INSPIRING ESO Large Programme (1103.D-0797) is now available through the ESO Science Archive. This release provides fully reduced and calibrated VLTI/PIONIER observations obtained in the GRISM_H mode for eight post-AGB binary systems. 

The INSPIRING programme uses VLTI observations to study the inner rims of dusty circumbinary discs around post-AGB binaries.
Go to Announcement

Call for Proposals for Period 118

Published: 15 Jul 2026
The Call for Proposals for observations at ESO telescopes in Period 118 (1 May 2027 - 30 April 2028) has been released. Please consult the Period 118 document before applying for time on ESO telescopes. All technical information about the offered instruments and facilities can be found on the ESO webpages linked from the Call for Proposals. The proposal submission deadline is on 22 September 2026, 12:00 CEST.
Go to Announcement

ESO’s first Fast Track Channel Call 117A Proposal Submission Statistics

Published: 15 Jul 2026
ESO received 244 valid proposals for its first Fast Track Channel (FTC) call 117A (1 September 2026 – 28 February 2027). The deadline for proposal submission was 15 June 2026. The total time request amounted to approximately 1970 hours (of which 80 hours were Target-of-Opportunity requests), for a total available time of 460 hours for this first FTC call. This corresponds to a mean oversubscription factor of 4.3, comparable to that of the previous Yearly Cycle (P117). The telescope with the highest oversubscription is Melipal (UT3), with a total request of 643 hours (excluding ESPRESSO), corresponding to an oversubscription factor of 7.1 (again excluding ESPRESSO). The most demanded instrument was X-Shooter (406 hours), followed by ESPRESSO (307 hours, to be distributed among several UTs; labelled as ICCF1 in the above graph), and MUSE (236 hours). As a reminder, only VLT/I Normal programmes with a maximum time request of 30 hours were offered in this first FTC call.
Go to Announcement

ALMA Reaches 5000 Refereed Publications

Published: 13 Jul 2026
On 27th June 2026, ALMA and its scientific community reached a major scientific milestone with the publication of the 5000th refereed paper based on ALMA data. This achievement comes just 14 years after the start of Early Science operations and reflects ALMA’s extraordinary scientific impact. All of these ALMA publications and data are accessible through the ALMA Science Archive.
Go to Announcement

Bibiana Prinoth and Maximilian Häberle Awarded IAU PhD Prizes

Published: 13 Jul 2026
ESO is delighted to congratulate two ESO Fellows, Bibiana Prinoth and Maximilian Häberle, who are among the recipients of the 2025 IAU PhD Prizes. These annual awards recognise outstanding scientific contributions and exceptional doctoral thesis research carried out by early-career astronomers across the globe.
Go to Announcement

Celebrating ALMA Band 2 Production Completion

Published: 06 Jul 2026
On 16 June 2026, ESO's ALMA Support Centre hosted the ALMA Band 2 Production Completion Event. Thirty-six participants from the Band 2 consortium, contributing European institutes, industry partners, and the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) travelled to ESO Garching to celebrate this important milestone for ALMA. Together with ESO staff, more than 70 people attended the associated workshop and celebration activities throughout the day.
Go to Announcement
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 | 50 | 51 | 52 | 53 | 54 | 55 | 56 | 57 | 58 | 59 | 60 | 61 | 62 | 63 | 64 | 65 | 66 | 67 | 68 | 69 | 70 | 71 | 72 | 73 | 74 | 75 | 76 | 77 | 78 | 79 | 80 | 81 | 82 | 83 | 84 | 85 | 86 | 87 | 88 | 89 | 90 | 91 | 92 | 93 | 94 | 95 | 96 | 97 | 98 | 99 | 100 | 101 | 102 | 103 | 104 | 105 Next » 
Showing 1 to 10 of 1045 announcements

Show all announcements