The year 2020 will go into history as an exceptional one in almost every area of human activity. While we are still suffering the direct impact of the global pandemic and these will surely continue for some time, the end of the year is a suitable occasion to sincerely thank the efforts of our scientific community to carry on producing excellent science. I also wish to express my appreciation to all ESO staff and to our partners and contractors in the Member States and Chile for finding creative ways of enabling our projects to move forward, and of resuming astronomical observations and the delivery of scientific data. Last but not least, my warmest thanks to the Member State delegations in our governing bodies for their continued, unfailing and invaluable support to ESO.

The Joint ALMA Observatory (JAO) is planning to start the observations for Cycle 8 2021, in October 2021. A Call for Proposals (CfP) with detailed information on the new cycle is anticipated to be issued in March 2021 and the deadline for proposal submission will be in April 2021. The purpose of this pre-announcement is to highlight aspects of the CfP to assist with early planning. It also contains information related to the proposal review process.

VIRCAM@VISTA started science operations on December 15th, bringing back all Paranal telescopes. The operational systems on Paranal are: FORS2@UT1, UVES@UT2, SPHERE & X-Shooter@UT3, MUSE@UT4 with AOF, ESPRESSO@ICCF, OmegaCAM@VST, VIRCAM@VISTA, Gravity/MATISSE/PIONIER @ VLTI.

During the COVID-19 pandemic the European ARC Network continues to provide support for PIs and users of archival data. More specifically the European ARC Network is offering a series of topical trainings called I-TRAIN. The next appointment is on January 15^th, 2021, with an online training on UVMultiFit, a versatile library for fitting models directly to visibility data. More information on this event can be found at this link and upcoming trainings will be soon advertised on the European ARC Announcements page.

The ESO Office for Science is pleased to announce the beginning of the Hypatia Colloquium Series, where early career scientists will have the opportunity of describing their research to a very broad audience. The seminars were selected after a very competitive process following the reception of over 300 proposals by ESO. The detailed programme of the seminars, which are scheduled to take place online on Tuesdays at 3pm (Central European Time), is already available.

GRAVITY+ was recently recommended by the ESO Scientific and Technical Committee as the top priority instrument upgrade for the VLT/I and will start the Phase A in 2021. It will transform interferometric capabilities of the VLTI by enhancing the sensitivity to K=18mag on-axis or K=22mag off-axis with Laser Guide Stars on all UTs and will allow phase referencing over an unprecedented large field of >30" (compared to currently 2"). This will enable milliarcsecond imaging and microarcsecond astrometry in the infrared for a wide new range of Galactic and extragalactic science cases. The GRAVITY+ consortium invites interested members of the ESO science community to a two half-day online workshop on GRAVITY+ that will take place on 24-25 February 2021.

The first 60000 data cubes and continuum images generated by the Additional Representative Images for Legacy (ARI-L) ALMA development project are now available to download from the ALMA Science Archive (ASA). In addition to the primary-beam-corrected images, the released products also include the primary beams, and mask for all targets and calibrators of more than 1200 Cycle 3 and 4 datasets.

The User Support Department again extends its thanks to all those Principal Investigators and their Phase 2 delegates who filled in this year's online Paranal Service Mode User Satisfaction Survey. A total of 139 responses were received from the targeted campaign.  As in the past, where possible, those respondents who provided detailed comments have been contacted via e-mail.  A summary report based on this latest User Satisfaction Survey is now available. 

A broad range of fundamental science is pushing for significantly better spectroscopic sensitivity at near-UV wavelengths. The four 8.2m telescopes of ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) are the world's most scientifically productive ground-based observatory at visible/infrared wavelengths. Looking to the future of the VLT there is a long-standing aspiration for an optimised ultraviolet spectrograph, culminating in plans for the Cassegrain U-Band Efficient Spectrograph (CUBES). An on-line workshop on science with UV-efficient ground-based spectrographs will take place on 3-5 February 2021.

The ELT has recently received a 10% increase to its budget, which brings the total cost of the project to €1.3 billion. The funding boost was approved by the ESO Council, the organisation’s main governing body. An 80% of the ELT’s budget is being invested in contracts with industry in ESO member states and in Chile. The revised budget includes the procurement of components originally deferred to a second phase of the project, such as the telescope’s second prefocal station, two more laser guide star systems, a set of astronomy-relevant atmospheric monitoring equipment and a small technical building at Armazones to optimise operations and maintenance activities. The new budget includes the cost of activities needed to bring the ELT into operation as part of ESO’s Paranal Observatory.