Astronomers applying for time in Period 101 should note that the Observing Programmes Committee (OPC) scientific subcategories belonging to Categories A and B have been redefined. In addition, Category A is now called "Cosmology and the Intergalactic Medium" (previously "Cosmology") while Category B has been renamed "Galaxies" from "Galaxies and Galactic Nuclei". The full updated list of A and B subcategories is available on the OPC Categories page and in the ESOFORM User Manual.

ESO’s prominent 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.

The ESO Engineering and Technology Research Fellowship 2018 offers early-career researchers with a PhD degree in an engineering-related discipline, or in physics / astronomy with a strong technology content, the opportunity to take an active part in the very active ESO R&D projects for a minimum of 50% of their time, combined with a good deal of team spirit, curiosity and eagerness to learn.

Santiago and La Silla Observatory, Chile, 18 February – 2 March 2018

The ESO/NEON School is preferentially targeted to PhD students, advanced MSc's and early PostDocs. During two weeks of intense work the participants will have the chance to have hands-on experience of the full cycle from proposal preparation to data reduction. Students will have lectures on the basics of observing techniques and how to prepare observations for ESO telescopes in Santiago, and then go to the La Silla Observatory for three nights of observations with the NTT and Danish 1.54-metre telescopes. Full details on the School website.

Technical losses from VLT Visitor Mode observations have been analysed over four Periods (P95 – P98) and are reported here in response to a request from the Users Committee. The technical losses in Visitor Mode, and for global Service Mode and Visitor Mode in parenthesis are as follows on the VLT: UT1: 2.2% (3.4%), UT2: 2.5% (3.1%), UT3: 3.4% (4.6%), UT4: 1.2% (3.9%); on VLTI: 3.8% (7.9%).

1D spectra for telluric standard stars from the beginning of X-shooter operations in October 2009 until the present are now available as stand-alone science-grade spectra. About 30000 new 1D spectra have been added to the X-shooter data collection for a list of 1000 target stars; these numbers will grow as new spectra are added.

New versions of the transient and photometric catalogues from the PESSTO Public Spectroscopic Survey have been released to complement the previously released DR3 spectra.

The second catalogue release from the ESO Public Survey, the VST Photometric H-alpha Survey of the Southern Galactic Plane and Bulge (VPHAS+), is now available via the Catalogue Facility. This band-merged catalogue covers about 1100 square degrees, corresponding  to 48% of the VPHAS+ footprint covering the southern Galactic Plane and is based on images acquired up to 30 March 2015.

AMAZE (Assessing the Mass-Abundance redshift [z] Evolution) was a SINFONI Large Programme aimed at determining the mass-metallicity relation and galaxy dynamics in the redshift range 3 < z < 5 (Programme ID 178.B-0838; PI: R. Maiolino). The full set of extracted 1-D FITS spectra from this survey were released in February 2011 and have now been migrated and ingested in the ESO Science Archive Facility.

The 100th Observing Programmes Committee (OPC) met on 16–18 May 2017. A total of 1082 (8-hour equivalent) nights of Visitor Mode and Service Mode observations were allocated on the VLT/VLTI, VISTA, VST, the 3.6-metre and NTT, and APEX telescopes. The submission deadline for Phase 2 Service Mode observations is 3 August 2017; see the separate announcement for further details.