The Offices for Science and the Astronomy Faculty are very pleased to present the 2020 ESO Fellows. Here is an introduction to the Fellows due to start in Garching, Germany later this year.

The Next Generation Transit Survey (NGTS) is a ground based exoplanet survey designed to detect Neptune and super-Earth sized planets orbiting around bright stars, using the transit method. The NGTS facility consists of 12 fully-robotic 20 cm f/2.8 telescopes located at the ESO site on Paranal, Chile. Each telescope has a 2.8x2.8 deg² field of view and is equipped with a custom filter with a bandpass of 520-890nm, which increases sensitivity to late-K and early-M stars.

This data release (DR5.1) is based on the observations acquired between February 2010 and October 2016 of 42 VMC survey tiles encompassing the whole Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), the Magellanic Bridge and the Magellanic Stream components of the survey. The total sky coverage is 40, 20, and 3 deg² in the SMC, the Bridge, and the Stream, respectively. This release adds reduced and calibrated deep products (co-added tile images and related single band catalogues), together with a multi-band (YJKs) aperture matched, epoch merged source catalogue for more than 14.6 million sources, three multi epoch single band catalogues, a catalogue of variable sources (39406 records) and a PSF photometry catalogue. The total volume of this data release is about 166 Gb.

All ESO observatories continue to operate in safe mode and no science operation is taking place. All visitor mode runs until middle of July have been cancelled. La Silla Paranal Observatory has developed a ramp-up plan to transition the Paranal, La Silla and APEX Observatories from Safe State to Restricted Operations mode, with the ability to perform basic science operations with limited staffing on site. Once the ramp-up plan is initiated, we estimate a minimum of three weeks until first scientific data can be taken again, and about two more weeks until 'steady state' restricted operations would be reached.

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to impact the global community, including ALMA users and staff. While ALMA operations remain suspended, we have been working actively on plans to restart operations at a time that they become feasible. In these unprecedented circumstances, ALMA’s first priority is the health and safety of all our staff, many of whom travel long distances by bus and plane to reach the remote ALMA telescope site in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile. At this time, and given the current evolution of the COVID-19 outbreak in Chile, it is unclear when a ramp up to start operations could begin, or when a restart of science operations will be possible. ALMA is working on guidelines and considerations for the restart of operations and will provide a next update to the community in the coming weeks.

ESO Headquarters, Garching, Germany 22-26 November, 2021

Due to the difficult circumstances due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the LOC and SOC agreed to postpone this conference to 2021. It will be held as planned at ESO Headquarters. The organisers have studied the possibility of going ahead with an online meeting, but this would have been very detrimental to one of the main goals, which is to foster discussions and collaborations between members of the four different communities (Galactic, extra-galactic, high-z and theory).

All ESO observatories continue to operate in safe mode and no science operations are taking place. As in April and May,  all Visitor Mode runs have also been cancelled for the first two weeks of June. An update will be posted on the La Silla Paranal Observatory news page as soon as ESO starts to ramp up and resume science observations. At present, no date has been set for the commencement of operations.

The ESO research studentship programme provides an outstanding opportunity for PhD students to experience the exciting scientific environment at one of the world's leading observatories. ESO's studentship positions are open to students enrolled in a university PhD programme in astronomy or related fields. Students accepted into the programme work on their doctoral project under the formal supervision of their home university, but they come to ESO to work and study under the co-supervision of an ESO staff astronomer for a period of between one and two years.

ESO is organising a web-based series of Cosmic Duologues aiming to cover the current state of some of the major questions in astronomy today in a lively way, via a duologue between two professional astronomers, each expert in their field. These events are streamed live via YouTube and are open to all members of the scientific community. The dedicated website will show how to access the last two duologues, including information on how to access past events. The next event on Substructure in Protoplanetary Discs will take place on Monday 29 June. The following duologue will be called Dust at High-z  and will be held on Monday 6 July. Please see the event webpage for more details of the event.

The Munich Astrophysics Colloquium (JAC) series is jointly organised by ESO, the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestial Physics and the Observatory of the Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich. JAC presentations cover the most exciting topics and developments in astrophysics. A video archive of presentations given in  2020 and 2019 is available and earlier presentations can be found through the ESO Garching Seminar Web page.