The deadline for proposal submission for Period 101 (1 April 2018 - 1 October 2018) was 28 September 2017. 899 valid proposals were submitted, including 16 Large Programmes, of which two are GTO Large Programmes. The number of proposals for P101 is very similar to that of periods 91 (893), 92 (892), 93 (898), 94 (901), 98 (901), 99 (887) and 100 (895). This confirms the leveling off observed after the peak of periods 95 (934), 96 (960) and 97 (1024).

As of 1 October 2017, users of designated visitor mode programs are able to view from their computer at home the relevant operation panel in the Paranal control room, via the Paranal Observatory Eavesdropping Mode. Access credentials will be provided by the mountain staff in advance of the run. Further details are available via the Paranal Science Operations page.

ESO's telescope bibliography telbib (telbib.eso.org) has been enhanced resulting in a number of new features. In particular, the updated interface provides more information about which data were used in a particular paper, and enables access to data products as well as raw data.

More details on the outcome of the ALMA Cycle 5 review are now available. The highest priority Cycle 5 projects are listed on a dedicated webpage. In addition a full report describes the proposal review process in detail, and presents the proposal statistics and regional distribution, as well as the distribution of proposals across science categories and receiver bands. The report can be downloaded here.

The anticipated configuration schedule for Cycle 5 has been modified from that posted in the Proposer's Guide and the updated schedule is available via this link. The most significant change is that Cycle 5 will begin in the configuration C43-10 instead of C43-7, and then move to more compact configurations.

ESO Headquarters, Garching, Germany, 17–19 January 2018

ESO is co-organising a workshop on the scientific merit for – and technical implementation of – an Atacama Large Aperture Submm/mm Telescope (AtLAST). The workshop will be a crucial forum to collect insights and feedback, and commit to a single vision for realising a single dish facility. The programme will cover aspects of the science case driving the telescope and instrument requirements as well as potential telescope concepts.

ESO, Santiago, Chile, 5–9 March 2018

This one-week workshop is the third edition of the Observing Planetary Systems workshop (OPS-III) held every 5 years at ESO-Chile, which aims to bring together  Solar System and exoplanet scientific communities. The discovery of exoplanetary systems with a large variety of architectures can teach us about the formation and history of our own Solar System, and the deep understanding of our own environment can help us search for traces of life outside of the Solar System.  

VANDELS is a deep Public Spectroscopic Survey of high-redshift galaxies with the VIMOS spectrograph. It is designed to exploit the multi-wavelength imaging and near-IR grism spectroscopy available in the CANDELS UDS and CDFS fields. The goal is to obtain spectra with sufficient signal-to-noise ratio to derive metallicities and velocity offsets from absorption and emission lines, allowing a detailed investigation of the physics of galaxies in the early Universe. Within an area of 0.2 deg², the survey will deliver more than 2500 high (15-20) signal-to-noise spectra of star forming galaxies in the redshift range 2.5 < z< 5.5, passive galaxies with H< 22.5 at 1.5 < z < 2.5, and star forming galaxies at 3.0 < z < 7.0 with H < 27, in the AB magnitude system.

This third data release from the VISTA Kilo-degree Infrared Galaxy Public Survey VIKING of images, source lists and a catalogue covers all of the highest quality data (images and single-band source lists) taken from November 2009 to March 2015. The release contains 736 VISTA images, of which 662 have coverage in all five VIKING near-infrared filters, 647 with deep co-adds in J, and an additional 74 with at least two filters. These 736 fields cover a total area of 1104 square degrees.

The Call for Proposals for observations at ESO telescopes in Period 101 (1 April 2018 – 30 September 2018) has been released. Please consult the Period 101 document for the main news items and policies related to applying for time on ESO telescopes. All technical information about the offered instruments and facilities is contained on ESO webpages that are linked from the Call. The proposal submission deadline is 12:00 CEST 28 September 2017.