As the first generation of ESO Public Surveys was completing their observations on the VLT Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA), ESO issued a Call for new VISTA Public Surveys. The extensive process of the evaluation of proposals and preparation of Survey Management Plans for the second cycle of VISTA Public surveys has now been almost completed. Seven new projects will start operations in P99 (April – September 2017) covering a wide range of scientific topics.

Science workshops are an essential component of ESO's programmes and represent a unique opportunity to promote and foster ideas and collaborations within the scientific community. Every year, through the Directorate for Science, ESO provides support and funding to organise two workshops in Santiago and four in Garching, as well as co-funding some external workshops (see ESO Workshops calendar). A new Call has been issued inviting community astronomers to team up with ESO staff and fellows in Chile and/or in Germany to submit proposals for ESO workshops to be held in 2018.

Version 0.22.0 of the SPHERE pipeline has been released and can be downloaded from the VLT Instrument Pipelines page. This is the first version of the SPHERE pipeline that includes all necessary recipes as well as fully functional Reflex workflows to reduce SPHERE data from all standard modes of the instrument.

Statistics on refereed publications in 2016 that make use of data from ESO telescopes have just been published by the ESO library. The statistics are calculated using the ESO Telescope Bibliography (telbib), a database of refereed publications that use ESO data. In January 2017, the total number of publications in telbib resulting from the La Silla Paranal Observatory since 1996, passed 13 000. The annual summary of publication statistics, with breakdown by telescopes and instruments and comparison with other observatories, is available as Basic ESO Publication Statistics.

Special Session SS20 at EWASS, Prague, 26 – 30 June 2017

The European Week of Astronomy and Space Science (EWASS) Special Session No. 20, held on the first day (26 June) of the conference, will be devoted to the three particular modes of observing with ALMA that demonstrate the unique capabilities of the facility: High-Frequency Observations (specifically in Bands 8, 9 and 10); High-Angular-Resolution Observations with baslines up to 16 km; Solar Observations. Further details on the SS20 site.

ALMA Cycle 4 (1 Oct 2016 – 30 Sept 2017) continues and PI observations will resume on 1 March 2017 after the "austral winter" engineering period through February. More information on the ALMA Status page.

Amended restrictions on humidity, wind and dew point applicable to opening and closing of the domes of the ESO 3.6-metre and the New Technology Telescope (NTT) have been recently released. Both telescopes wil be closed when humidy reaches 80% and can only be opened when it is below 70% for 30 minutes. For the ESO 3.6-metre, the new wind speed restriction will be 18 ms^-1. The full listing of the weather restrictions for La Silla telescopes is available here (PDF). These stricter limits lead to a very small increase in weather downtime as result of increased telescope and instrument safety.

VLTI Community Days: ESO Headquarters, Garching, Germany, 8–10 March 2017
VLTI Winter School: ESO Headquarters, Garching, Germany, 6–8 March 2017

The Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) is currently undergoing deployment of the second generation instruments and infrastructure upgrades, and the K-band multi-beam combiner instrument GRAVITY is being commissioned. The VLTI Community Days are a unique opportunity to get together and reflect on the present and plan for the future.

The VISTA Variables in the Via Lactea (VVV) survey fourth data release (DR4) provides VISTA tile images and source lists in ZYJHKs filters, processed by the Cambridge Astronomical Survey Unit (CASU), for a total sky coverage of 560 square degrees. DR4 contains science data products from observations in the period 1 October 2013 – 15 October 2015, and also science data products from observations in September 2010 to September 2013 not included in the previous release.

The ALMA Long Baseline Campaign, taking place from 1 September to 30 November 2014, has been proceeding well. As a result, the observatory has decided to expand the scope of the capabilities to be demonstrated with two Science Verification (SV) targets with Band 7: the pre-main sequence star HL Tau and the gravitational lens SDP 81. Information on ALMA SV can be found here.